


Forget Me Not

by MissMollyBloom



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, BAMF Molly Hooper, F/M, Mycroft Holmes Has Feelings, Pining Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2020-10-18 02:40:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20631737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMollyBloom/pseuds/MissMollyBloom
Summary: Takes off from the end of *that* phone call in TFP.Standing in her kitchen, phone forgotten on the bench, tea once freshly brewed now tepid and acrid from too long steeping, Molly had had enough.He had flirted with her.Played with her emotions.Lied to her.Ignored her.Disparaged her.Used her and humiliated her.And every time she had allowed it. But no more.---After his phonecall from Sherrinford, Molly does something drastic that changes everything about her past, present and future with Sherlock Holmes. Now it's up to Sherlock to set things right.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had been sitting on this post-TFP amnesia fic for a while, but when I saw this amazing post on tumblr (https://alovethatkilledme.tumblr.com/post/187680548210/not-sure-how-i-feel-about-this-one-oh-thanks-to) that fit the general idea of this fic, I thought it might be time to set it loose in the world.
> 
> I don't have a beta so please forgive typos and mistakes.

“Say it. Say it like you mean it.”

Molly closed her eyes and for a moment imagined a world where the words she had just dared him to say could ever be true.

A midnight phone call between cases where his whispered voice bridged the vast distances between them.

Or between breaths as spent, sweat-slicked bodies finally separated.

Or life-or-death situation where Sherlock, frantic, in danger, reached out to her as if his life depended on it.

“I – I…” He stuttered on the word. Sherlock Holmes was on the back foot, a place she never thought she’d se him. “I love you…” he finished. Pausing ever so slightly, before saying again, “I love you.”

Molly took a deep breath, knowing his very convincing act was a mere act – a performance – a game.

But fair was fair – it was her turn.

“I love you,” she whispered into the phone. Her eyes closed in a wish that maybe, just maybe it was true, that his phone call was his way of explaining how he felt. A true Sherlockian ploy.

The silence of the dead line shocked Molly back to reality. It wasn’t an exchange between two lovers. Instead, she had just fallen victim to the latest in a long line of Sherlock Holmes master manipulations.

Just like the way he’d flirt with her to get morgue access, or complement her to ensure his lab tests were run as a priority.

Or the night he came to her, desperate an alone, and in the darkness of her lab solicited her loyalty with words she once believed but now wondered were as empty as the performance she had just witnessed and as false as the declaration of love he’d just shared.

She’d never counted.

And he’d never trusted her.

Nothing in their history could be believed anymore.

When he manipulated her to stay in his life after his return from the dead with a not-date-day solving crimes. A day that was capped off with heartfelt words of thanks a not-entirely-chaste kiss on her cheek: lies.

Or the dirty, filthy things he whispered in her ear in the back of an ambulance she not-entirely-honestly recquisitioned while she examined him to make sure he was indeed not yet dead, but definitely dying, after taking enough drugs to stop a rhino: ramblings of a junkie.

Or worse, the swings between desire, depression and downright bitter brutality as she nursed him back to health through detox and rehab: utter bullshit.

Bit Molly didn’t blame him.

She convinced herself that she was serving a greater good when really she was serving her own need to be near him, like a moth drawn to the flame of his brilliance. Every step along the way she had allowed it, and allowed him to use her. She had believed his lies, bought into the fantasy that she wasn’t a pawn in his game but a valued asset – a friend as he’d just so claimed.

But now she saw their path for the maze it truly was: the byzantine labrynth that she so willingly followed him through, only to find herself now – utterly lost and alone.

Standing in her kitchen, phone forgotten on the bench, tea once freshly brewed now tepid and acrid from too long steeping, Molly had had enough.

He had flirted with her.

Played with her emotions.

Lied to her.

Ignored her.

Disparaged her.

Used her and humiliated her.

And every time she had allowed it. But no more.

Sherlock Holmes had crossed a line, perhaps the only line they had ever drawn in the sand between them. Ever since that humiliating Christmas he had never again made light of her feelings for him. It was a silent, unspoken reality that she never said, and he never acknowledged. 

Until today.

And Molly wasn’t going to take it anymore. Grabbing a garbage bag from the bottom draw, she stalked into her bedroom. Flinging open the wardrobe, she grasped between winter coats for a box she was ashamed now to own. Feeling now like a lovesick teenager with her first celebrity crush, bile rose in her throat to think that she had such a collection of trinkets and detritus, every piece of tangible evidence of their time together.

T-shirts left behind from sleepovers in her flat, his bolthole. Cigarette lighters abandoned on her back deck – the only place she’d tolerate his smoking. Pathology journals annotated in his trademark flourished penmanship. She dumped it all in the garbage, along with a birthday card, written almost certainly at John’s behest, and a photograph of the two of them at Baker Street – Sherlock with arms uncharacteristically wrapped around her and Molly clad in the same jumper she was now wearing.

Better times.

She gave the photo one more look before tearing it up, shoving the torn pieces into the bottom of the bag.

Only one thing remained. An envelope, creased and battered, almost forgotten. Sherlock hadn’t even been the one to give it to her. In fact, she was certain he didn’t even know of its existence. And yet, what it contained had everything to do with him. In many ways, what the envelope contained was him.

It was the night after Sherlock’s fall – the day everything changed.

Molly was bone-tired. A night spent planning and a day spent executing a friend’s fake suicide would do that to you. But it had all come off without a hitch.

Sherlock Holmes was dead – or so the world had been led to believe. Only Molly Hooper knew otherwise – or so she thought, as she dumped her keys in the bowl next to the door, turned on the lamp and started removing her coat.

A voice stopped her in her tracks.

“You did a remarkable thing today, Miss Hooper,” came the dulcet tones of Mycroft Holmes from his seat in the corner, half-illuminated, half-in shadows.

Molly had no time for more Holmes theatrics, “It’s actually Dr. Hooper.” She paused, exhaling in an almost-laugh before adding, “although, probably not for much longer if the autopsy I just performed on your brother’s doppelganger is ever looked at too closely.”

Molly strode straight past Mycroft and into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She’d barely had the chance to eat or drink all day and the caffeine withdrawal was causing her temples to throb and her neck to ache.

Mycroft followed her.

“You needn’t worry. I have it sorted.”

The elder Holmes reached into his coat and retrieved an envelope, placing it on the kitchen countertop between them.

Molly looked at it like it was dirt, “I don’t want your money,“ she said, pushing it back towards him.

Mycroft smiled without mirth.

“This is far more important than money. It’s safety.”

Compelled by quizzical look that crossed Molly’s face, imperceptible to anyone but a Holmes, he continued. “I have used every one of my considerable powers to keep your actions today hidden from anyone who might be interested.”

“Like who?” Molly doubted his words, not just because she didn’t want them to be true, but because she didn’t believe them.

“Like the same people who had snipers trained on John Watson, Greg Lestrade and Mrs Hudson not more than,” he paused, checking his watch for effect, “18 hours ago.”

“But there weren’t any snipers on me.” The kettle boiled, but Molly didn’t hear it.

“They don’t know how important you are to my brother.”

They locked eyes.

“I’m not,” she said, trying not to consciously recall the words Sherlock said to her last night. His declaration that she did count, and his pledge of trust in her. Always.

She failed.

Mycroft’s eyes sparked in recognition. In that moment, Molly truly hated how the Holmes men could read her every thought, examine her every emotion, no matter how hard she’d tried to hide them.

“I believe otherwise. And if your actions today and your importance to Sherlock Holmes is ever revealed, you are in grave danger.”

He pushed the envelope back towards her.

Molly picked it up, fingers running absently along the edge. “So what is this?”

“Proprietary technology, the legacy of Operation Paperclip, MK Ultra mind control with a dash of The Manchurian Candidate thrown in.”

“I thought that was a film,” she smiled. He didn’t.

Mycroft continued undeterred, but his silence on the topic spoke volumes.

“You needn’t trouble yourself with how it works, what is important for our consideration is what it does.”

“Which is?”

“Inside this envelope is a pill. You swallow it, and all memories of your involvement with by brother's death disappear.”

It sounded too unreal, too sci-fi to be true. But then, from what Molly knew of Mycroft, the man who held the British Government, MI6 and NATO in the palm of his hand, it certainly wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

“Is this in case I’m ever interrogated?” It was the only circumstance she could consider using it.

“Yes. Something like that.” Buried in his tone was a hint at horrors beyond torture that Molly didn’t dare imagine.

“Ok.” Molly placed the envelope back down, “I’ll keep it safe then.”

Mycroft wasn’t leaving. “There is one side effect,” his tone was ominous. “We can’t delete memories of you helping my brother without-“ He stopped. He couldn’t say it.

But she could.

“Without deleting Sherlock.”

“Yes,” there was a grief in his face. The first emotion she’d ever seen him convey. “Every memory, every moment, everything you’ve ever shared with my little brother will be gone.” There was something in the way he said it that made her wonder if such a deletion had already occurred. She let the thought evaporate, along with the steam from her forgotten kettle. Surely Mycroft wouldn’t be so cruel as to delete a sibling.

“So it really is the nuclear option?” It wasn’t a joke.

“Only use it if you have no other choice.”

Five years later, and Molly sat on the floor in her room, turning the envelope over in her hands. Every moment, good and bad, gone in one moment.

Molly remembered the woman she was before she met Sherlock Holmes – strong, confident, independent – and then looked at the evidence of the lovesick fool she had become. There was no other choice.

She tore open the package, said goodbye to Sherlock Holmes, and immediately realised she’d made a huge mistake.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock had wanted to go straight to her, to see for himself that she was indeed unharmed, to comb through every inch of her flat to make sure there were indeed no explosives and that every single camera that had violated her privacy was found and destroyed.

And then, he would hold her in his arms and explain everything – the explosion at Baker Street, his sister, the phone call –

And why he said it twice.

He’d tell her how the first was practice, an act, like any facade he’d ever worn in order to solve a case. The illusion of truth.

The second – that was a different story. That was pure, unvarnished truth.

Mycroft knew. He said as much in the condolences he’d offered the moment the call had ended. “However hard that was,” he’d said, and what he’d meant was however hard it was feeling the emotions he’d trained himself so hard to keep buried, to acknowledge a truth beyond truth, with the power to transform life as Sherlock knew it.

And John knew it too. The police cars had pulled away leaving them alone outside Musgrave Hall. The last men standing.

“You love her, don’t you?” John asked. After the last few days, there was no more need for anything other than the truth.

“Was it that obvious?” Sherlock asked, genuinely interested in his friend’s answer. Self-awareness was not something Sherlock would ever take for granted again – not after Eurus, Redbeard, Molly.

“Well, I was in the room when you said it to her,” John reminded him, not that Sherlock would ever need reminding of the fear of losing her that darted through is heart with every second that ticked down.

“You know, I could have just been saying it to save her life,” Sherlock rejoined, only half-halfheartedly.

John didn’t take the bait, turning to face his friend with a seriousness often reserved for when Sherlock was being a particular shade of stupid in John’s eyes.

“Look, Sherlock, this all might be new to you, but I know what it's like when you realise you're in love.”

They lapsed into silence, and in that silence a homage, a prayer to John’s lost wife and Sherlock’s much-missed friend. Mary’s memory would always loom large between them.

After a moment, John laughed quietly to himself.

“What?” Sherlock asked, turning his full attention away from Mary and towards his friend.

“Well, you Hulk-Smashing Molly’s coffin was a bit of a hint, too.”

“I don’t understand your reference, but I think I glean your meaning.”

Sherlock looked at his hands, knuckles still raw, splinters still sharp and embedded in the skin.

“So, what are you going to do about it?” John asked as they began walking together towards the car Lestrade had left for them.

“Well, first I’ll have to discover if she’ll even speak to me again.” The pain in her voice had been too deep, the emotions and hurt so raw.

“She will-“ John paused to think before adding, “eventually.”

Sherlock nodded. He hoped his friend was right. “And then,” Sherlock stopped to think, a smile crossing his face, “I think I’ll ask her if she’s ever been to High Wycombe.”

They climbed in the back of the car, both glad that Lestrade had arranged for a driver. Neither men had the energy or alertness for a nighttime drive back to London. Not after everything they’d been through in the last few days, weeks, months.

While Sherlock had every intention of seeing Molly that night, his bone-tired body had other ideas. The rhythmic sound of the highway had him nodding off in mere minutes and without any memory of how he got there, Sherlock found himself waking up on John’s couch, 20 hours later.

It was midnight before he roused himself, a whole day had passed in slumber, but Sherlock couldn’t wait any longer. Knowing Molly’s roster as he did, he knew she’d be on the overnight shift at Bart’s.

Grabbing the spare set of clothes he kept at John’s, Sherlock showered, shaved, and headed straight for the morgue. Not the most romantic places for a declaration of love, but still, there was something fitting about it – like their relationship had come full-circle.

Only now he was the one who wanted to ask her out for coffee.

He approached the lab door as he had countless times before. But instead of bursting through with no regard to what was happening on the other side as he usually did, he stopped, taking a moment to watch her through the rounded portholes.

If she had been hurt by the phone call – and its abrupt ending – she wore no evidence of it. In fact, the calm, almost joyful radiance of her inner-spirit shone through more brightly than he could ever remember seeing. When did she last look so at peace? Certainly not since Mary’s death and Sherlock’s relapse – but before? Magnussen? His death? Her “relationship” with Jim from I.T.?

Searching his mind for images of Molly, Sherlock could definitely see a turning point after that night so many years ago now, after the showdown at Brighton Pool when, almost as an afterthought, Sherlock texted Lestrade to check on Molly, to let her know that she’d accidentally been dating a criminal mastermind, psychopath, and cold-blooded killer.

What Sherlock didn’t know then, but could see now, plain as day, was that he wasn’t trying to hurt her by keeping her at arm’s length. Instead he’d buried the one thing that truly struck him that night. If Moriarty had wanted to burn the heart out of him – why had he chosen to target Molly Hooper?

The mystery Sherlock refused to solve then now made perfect sense. Moriarty had seen something all those years ago that Sherlock had only realised less than 48 hours ago.

Molly was his heart, his emotional center, his humanity.

Of course Eurus knew it too. Why else put them through the torture. The coffin. The call.

Watching Molly as she worked, Sherlock knew that in the same part of his heart where Redbeard’s true identity dwellt, was the truth. Victor was his past, Molly was his future.

And Sherlock couldn’t wait another moment for his future to begin.

“Here goes nothing,” Sherlock muttered under his breath. Steeling himself for a moment, he flung the doors open, allowing them to fling shut behind him.

Molly was standing by the sink, her attention entirely focused on the beakers she was cleaning. She didn’t even turn towards the sound of the doors, nor acknowledge him as he approached.

He expected as much.

For a moment, the frequently prolix detective found himself without words.

“You don’t have to turn around,” he said. “In fact, maybe this will be easier for me if you don’t.”

Molly stopped cleaning, the beaker held in her hands, unmoving.

“There’s no apology that I can give that will make up for what happened – and believe me when I tell you that I have, indeed, dedicated my considerable brainpower to the task.”

Molly paused, placing the beaker into the sterilizer before turning, slowly, to look at him.

He had been prepared for anger, or a wrath akin to the morning in that very same lab when she slapped sense back into his drug-addled brain. Apart from anger, he’d considered sadness, a grief like the morning he told her that Mary had been shot. Molly cried the tears he wouldn’t let himself shed and in her arms gave him the comfort he knew he didn’t deserve.

What Sherlock wasn’t prepared for was the sheer blank expression Molly faced him with. More than masking her feelings, a quick glance told him that she had no galvanic response to his presence at all – no increase in blood pressure, heart rate, nothing. Whatever Molly was feeling, for the first time in his life, Sherlock was completely blind to it.

And he didn’t like it at all.

Sherlock continued, “I can’t apologise to you, Molly. You deserve more than that. But I can explain – if you’ll let me.”

Molly’s brow furrowed. She took a deep breath that took mere seconds but into which Sherlock projected every possible response – from “Fuck off” to “Let’s get coffee” or even better, dinner.

But what came next knocked Sherlock with the full force of a fullback’s foot to the chest.

“I’m sorry. What are you talking about?”

It wasn’t an act. She meant it.

Sherlock exhaled, almost laughing.

“Yesterday,” he said, breathless with incredulity. “The phone call?”

Molly’s face was still blank.

“When I said –“ he couldn’t being himself to repeat it just yet, “and you said – you know what was said.”

Still, no recognition from Molly.

“I’m sorry Sir,” she said as if she’d never met him before, “Who are you and why are you in my lab?”

Sherlock turned to take a step back to regroup. It was then he spotted the looming, ghost-like form in the corner of the room.

“Mr Holmes,” Molly said, not to Sherlock but to Mycroft, “Do you know this man?”

“My apologies, Dr Hooper,” said Mycroft, stepping forward to grab his brother by the arm, “He’s with me.”

Mycroft tugged Sherlock’s arm in the direction of the hallway. Overwhelmed by shock and confusion, Sherlock was much more pliable than he often allowed himself to be in the presence of his brother.

“Forgive us,” Mycroft said over his shoulder before the lab doors swung shut.

Mycroft ushered his brother down the hallway until he was certain that they were out of Molly’s earshot.

“What the hell is going on, Mycroft? What have you done to Molly?” His eyes were wide, his tone more frantic than at the peak of the phone call.

Mycroft’s face fell. It seemed that Sherlock wasn’t the only Holmes brother to gain contact with long-lost emotions in the last few days.

“Nothing has been done to Dr Hooper that she didn’t want done to herself.”

“Explain, please.” Sherlock spat the words. At his side his hands, still raw from the coffin, still embedded with splinters, balled into fists. Ready to strike.

“I could go into the science, I could show you charts of experiments or footage of test subjects, but you’ve just seen the proof for yourself.”

Sherlock saw, but he didn’t want to believe.

“She’s deleted me. How?”

“It doesn’t matter how.” His tone was grave, his face apologetic. Sherlock had never seen Mycroft apologise for a single thing in his life.

“You bet your life it matters. Your team of Dr Mengele and Dr Frankenstein have been playing with my-“ he stopped, no longer knowing what she was to him. “They've been playing games with Molly’s mind.”

“No. She did this to herself. We merely provided her with the technology.”

“And here I was after yesterday thinking you were done fucking around with my life.”

Sherlock, fists still ready to strike, strode up the hallway and landed the punch Mycroft deserved into the door of the supply closet. And another. And another.

Mycroft stopped him with a gentle hand to the shoulder. It reminded him of times as a child when Mycroft would bring him down. In the memories he had only just regained Sherlock could see why they’d always called him the “emotional one”.

“It was never intended for this.”

Sherlock stilled. The brothers stood in silence. Without thinking, Sherlock gravitated back to Molly’s lab, looking through the porthole at her for some sign that it wasn’t true. Perhaps this was another of Eurus’ experiments.

“How?” Sherlock asked after a moment.

“Does it matter?”

“How did she do it, Mycroft?” He persisted.

“It’s Cold War Era technology. Used for protecting sleeper agents if their cover was ever at risk.”

“But Molly’s not a sleeper agent,” he watched her as she worked. Her hands so graceful, skillful.

“No, but there was a time not too long ago when Dr. Hooper was in danger – when she held a secret that many would kill for.”

It dawned on Sherlock exactly when. That night in the lab, he had asked her if she would help him no matter what. He’d never considered her life being at stake for it. Clearly his brother had.

Whatever the consequences, Mycroft’s motives had been right; He’d wanted to protect Molly. Sherlock couldn’t fault him that.

“I hadn’t even had the chance to tell her anything – I hadn’t explained,” Sherlock said to himself more than to his brother.

“The seal on the package was broken less than five minutes after your call.” There was never any chance, is what Mycroft left unspoken. It’s not your fault, brother, is what he was silently saying.

“Fix it,” He asked. A plea.

“I can’t,” and from the look on his face Sherlock knew it to be true. “It’s irreversible. It has to be. It’s a fail-safe, for those for whom keeping their knowledge would be a fate worse than death.”

“You’re saying she decided she’d rather delete me than live with the memories?”

“Yes.”

Gone. Tender hands sewing up war wounds when he would use her flat as his bolthole. Erased. Morning coffee in quiet companionship at Barts, or at her flat when he’d stayed over. Deleted. And those words, said twice and utterly, utterly true. No more I love you.

“Brother, I need not remind you but I was in the room. I know what happened.” Mycroft must have seen the scale of loss on Sherlock’s face for his tone to be so uncharacteristically tender.

“I’m aware.”

“So believe me when I say if I could change it, I would. But as it stands, Sherlock, the only one with power to rewrite the past is you.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After spending so many years away from fandom and fic writing, I’ve been reminded by the warm response to this fic of what a wonderful community of Sherlollians we have. 
> 
> Thanks so much to all who have read and left kudos. A special shout-out to the encouragement I’ve received in comments from Herstory_Angel, cassd171, Yellowcar66, applejacks0808, OpalSkyLoveDivine, Alyxia. Your comments are what have inspired me to get Chapter 3 out so quickly. I hope you enjoy it!

John Watson thought he’d already seen Sherlock Holmes at his worst: Shooting the walls while board. Shooting-up when he hit rock-bottom. Blood-coated and wildly wielding a harpoon. Blood on his hands on more than one occasion - both literally and metaphorically. Jittery, jumping, jonesing for a fix or sullen, silent, skulking around the sitting room at Baker street.

John had even seen Sherlock with a broken heart before – or what he had assumed at the time to be a broken heart. Depressed, despondent and downright shattered, taking out his pain on the poor tortured strings of his violin after the Irene Adler incident.

But all those moods were nothing compared to the whirlwind of emotions John had been met with since the day after Sherrinford.

It was 3am in the morning when John awoke to the sound of rhythmical thumping – over and over – thwack, thwack, thwack. At first, he assumed Rosie was awake and rattling something about in her cot. The reality, however, was far more juvenile than even his 10-month-old daughter was capable of.

Heading down the stairs after checking that indeed Rosie was still asleep, John looked with still-bleary eyes into the loungeroom. Sherlock was stood in the middle of the room, the lounge had been dragged haphazardly to the side, and in its place, a punching bag had been suspended from the ceiling.

Sherlock was pummeling the bag over and over.

Walking closer, eyes adjusting to the dim, it took a while for John to register the target that had been duct-taped to the center of the bag: it was a photograph of Mycroft.

“Would you keep it down, you berk?” John whispered sharply, “You’ll wake Rosie!”

“Bloody. Mycroft.” Sherlock’s every word was punctuated by a punch. “Why. Didn’t. He. Get. It. Back?”

The only way John could see to stop him was to intercept a blow. He hoped Sherlock was tired enough that by now that his swing had lost its edge.

Sherlock’s eyes snapped to John’s in time for him to stop before connecting with his friend’s midsection.

“What’s going on? What’s Mycroft done now?” John asked.

Sherlock started peeling off his gloves. “He knew she’d do this. He knows everything.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Sherlock gestured to the envelope that was lying on the floor just inside the front door.  
“He’s done you the honour of reading you in.”

Whatever John wanted to know, whatever Mycroft had done to Sherlock, he knew the answer would be in that envelope.

He picked it up and read the title out loud, “Project Elosia?”

“My brother did always have a flair for the poetic,” Sherlock sneered. John shrugged, he didn’t get the reference.

“How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot,” Sherlock recited.

“Percy Shelley?” John asked after wracking his brain for the remnants of his long-forgotten poetry study.

Sherlock shook his head. “Alexander Pope,” he corrected.

But John’s attention had moved on from poetry to prose, his eyes racing over what seemed to be a declassified MI5 report:

_At 2:04pm on January 15 2017, the seal of the Elosia capsule container was broken by subject PE0005 – Molly Katherine Hooper DOB 27.3.1979. Container had been in the subject’s possession since requested by M.Holmes for Project Lazarus (see requisition order RB150112). _

_Containment and Effectiveness protocols were initiated and within 20 minutes of ingesting Elosia, subject Hooper was visited by Field Officer Blevins. Infiltration was achieved by Blevins who posed as a neighbor asking for a cup of sugar. _

_Within moments of arrival at Ms. Hooper’s flat, Blevins administered a tranquiliser and performed the required Containment and Effectiveness tests (see footage on accompanying disc)._

John picked up the empty CD case – Sherlock pointed to the television - lit and on screen-saver mode. Clearly he hadn’t waited for John to wake to watch it. 

John brought the screen back from sleep only to be greeted with a still image of Molly, sat at her dining room table. Her eyes were closed, she was clearly under the influence of whatever “tranquilizer” Mycroft’s goon had given her. The image was date and time stamped the day before yesterday – less than an hour after the phone call from Sherrinford.

John pressed play.

“What is your name?” came the unseen owner of a voice that John presumed belonged to Agent Blevins. John could detect a slight continental accent on the W, a slightly Germanic V sound that had not-quite been buried within the agent’s practiced R.P.

“Molly Katherine Hooper.” Her voice was soft, like she was talking in her sleep. John noticed Sherlock’s jaw tense. He clearly wasn’t happy to see her like that.

“What is your vocation?” Blevins continued.

“Specialist Registrar at Bart’s Hospital.”

A pile of photographs was placed before her. “Would you kindly identify these people?”

“This is my mum and sisters,” Molly indicated correctly, “My friend Meena and her fiancé Jacob.”

Molly flipped to another. “This is John Watson and his daughter Rosie – she’s my Goddaughter,” Molly added with a smile.

When she turned to the next photograph she paused, her brow furrowing. There was something she needed to process first.

“This is Mrs Hudson, John’s landlady, well, sort of-“

“**My** landlady?” John asked Sherlock who waved him quiet, directing him to keep watching.

The agent angled the next photograph towards the camera for the benefit of the unseen viewer. It was a photograph of Sherlock.

“Who is this man?” Blevins asked.

Molly picked up the photograph, studying it intensely, before putting it back down, and pushing it back across the table, almost as if the image had offended her.

“I’ve never seen him before.”

John’s mouth gaped. “Sherlock-“ his friend’s name said as a question, or the beginning of one.

Sherlock was looking through the screen as if trying to imagine himself there, across from Molly, rather than at this distance so far removed.

“The world forgetting by the world forgot,” Sherlock quoted again.

Blevins collected up the photographs.

“Would you kindly tell me your memory of the following dates?”

“Ok,” Molly said, her eyes still unfocused, her voice light and dreamy.

“What happened on May 10th, 2015?”

“John and Mary got married.”

“Would you kindly tell me what you remember from that day?”

“It was a lovely spring day. I wore a yellow dress, I really like that dress. Mary looked gorgeous. And-“ Molly choked off a laugh, “I stabbed my fiancé in the leg with a fork – I don’t know why, though.”

“Would you kindly tell me about the best man’s speech?”

For a moment it looked like Molly was about to say something, before shaking her head. “I don’t remember the speech at all. I don’t even know who John’s best man was.”

“But that’s impossible!” John exclaimed. Sherlock nodded gravely.

John would never forget Sherlock’s speech, nor would anyone present – as he was frequently reminded about on visits to his extended family. More than that, from his place at the head table, John had seen the way Molly looked at Sherlock throughout the speech, her eyes tearing up with a truth that she hadn’t yet acknowledged – that her relationship with Tom was on borrowed time.

“Let’s try another date.” Unseen, Officer Blevins’ voice continued. “Would you kindly recall the events of January 15, 2012?”

“Your fall?” John looked to Sherlock for confirmation, not that either of them would ever forget.

Molly’s brow creased in concentration before her face turned completely blank. “It was just a normal day at Barts,” she said in a robotic voice, devoid of emotion.

Knowing how Molly always wore her emotions on her sleeve, the sight of an cold and unaffected Molly turned John’s blood to ice. Before him was a Molly who had been somehow robbed of her unique-Molly-ness.

Blevins continued. “What about if I show you a newspaper from that day?”

A copy of The Sun with Kitty Reilly’s headline in bold was held out to Molly. “Suicide of fake genius,” she read in the same flat affect from before. But once her eyes read the next line, more of the real Molly returned.

Her eyes widened. “A suicide off the roof of Bart’s? You’d think I would remember that.”

There was a worry in her face, then as before, nothing. All emotions gone, a specific and peculiar Tabula Rasa.

“Thank you Dr Hooper. Would you kindly lie down and have a deep sleep until you need to get ready for work – you’re on night shift tomorrow.”

The video cut off.

The two men stood in shocked silence.

“Sherlock – what on earth was that?”

Sherlock ejected the disc, replacing it in the cover and turning it over and over absently in his hands.

“There was a precaution. Mycroft gave it to Molly after my fall. But she wasn’t meant to use it. Not unless-“

“Her life was in danger,” John offered.

Sherlock nodded. “It was Mycroft’s failsafe. If anyone in Moriarty’s network figured out her role in my death.”

“Plausible deniability” John waited a moment for it to sink in. Who knew what kinds of sickening science lay behind the technology that had just wiped his friend’s memory. To think that Mycroft would be willing to play with Molly’s mind brought bile to the back of John’s throat.

Then came another thought, one even more distasteful than the last. “Did you know about this?”

Sherlock stalked away into the kitchen before turning and taking a step back towards his friend. “Do you think I’d let her keep it this long if I did?” He was yelling – Rosie’s sleep be damned.

John believed him. And in that moment he realised just what Sherlock had lost. First Readbeard, Trevor, Eurus and now Molly. Before him stood a man who left Sherrinford with access to emotions he had kept shut-off for almost 30 years, now narrowed to one target: Molly.

Both men marked the magnitude of Sherlock’s pain in the pre-dawn quiet of John’s flat.

After a time, John spoke. “So what are you going to do?”

Sherlock’s eyes glazed over as he retrieved another line from Pope out of the depths of his mind palace. “Such if there be, who love so long, so well; Let him our sad, our tender story tell.”

John shrugged, unable to trace Sherlock’s meaning among the words.

“For once, I’m going to do precisely what Mycroft has told me to do.”

“And what’s that?” John asked, intrigued.

“I’m going to rewrite the past.”

John could only imagine what this meant, but in his sleep-deprived brain, he decided to speak before thinking. “Have you ever thought that –“ John trailed off. His friend didn’t deserve grief upon grief. But by then it was too late.

“Spit it out, John.” Sherlock’s impatient tone was all too familiar to him.

“I was just –“ there was no point sparing the feelings of a man who can read your every thought. “It’s just, this was her choice. I just wonder, maybe this is what she wanted?”

As soon as the words escaped his mouth, John wished he could take them back. But by then the impact of them on his friend had already been made. Sherlock didn’t speak again for three days.

* * *

Molly got off the tube at St Paul’s, trudging up the stairs and into the light, but the sun gave her no comfort.

All morning she’d felt weighted down, but couldn’t figure out why. The closest she could come to giving words to how she felt was akin to the feeling you’d left the iron on, but what if you never owned an iron? Or that your hair-straightener was sitting on the vanity table, burning dark lines into the white vinyl, except you only ever use rollers and pins? Or when you have a word on the tip of your tongue to describe a feeling, but the feeling you have isn’t one within the range of human experience.

Molly knew that there were words that the English language didn’t have an equivalent for. Germans can name the feeling of being alone and connected at the same time: _Waldeinsamkeit_. Japanese speakers can name the peace that comes from finding beauty in imperfections: _Wabi-Sabi_. But the feeling that had been plaguing Molly the most had been more closely akin to what the Portuguese called Saudade. She was longing for something that was absent, but couldn’t remember when she last had it, or even what it was. She was afraid that someone she loved was gone and would never return, but the feeling wasn’t grief: she knew what it was to lose a father, and more recently a friend in Mary. This was something altogether different.

She had lost, but lost so deeply that there was no way of beginning to look, no language to use to identify what it was, and no hope that it might be found.

The only thing she knew as she walked through the doors into Bart’s Pathology Lab, was that this place was important. And not just because of work. She just had to figure out why.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am so completely blown away by all the encouraging comments and kudos that have been left on this fic! It seems so many of you are enjoying it. I can only hope that I can live up to the weight of your expectations!
> 
> In addition to this chapter, I hope to post one more before the end of the weekend. But, as the next chapter is set in Sherlock's mind-palace it's a much trickier one than I've attempted so far. Wish me luck!
> 
> While you're here, I'd love it if you could check out the other fic I just updated - "A Most Unsuitable Pastime for a Lady". It's a Victorian Sherlolly I've been working on since 2015 and your encouragement about this fic has given me the confidence I needed to keep writing that one, too.
> 
> Thanks again for everyone who has sent an encouraging message. It means so much to a confidence-starved writer like me!  
I hope you enjoy.

In the days that followed John’s spectacular foot-in-mouth mistake, Sherlock remained a silent, almost-statuesque presence in John’s flat. John would have assumed that Sherlock had retreated to his Mind Palace except there was no evidence of any thoughts underneath Sherlock’s surface catatonia.

From time to time Sherlock would stand, seeking sustenance in John’s kitchen, or heading to the bathroom to take care of other pressing personal needs. But for the most part, Sherlock had taken up permanent residence lying across John’s lounge, eyes closed but not sleeping.

As John tidied the flat of Rosie’s toys, abandoned while his daughter took her 2pm nap, John could barely believe how much had changed. Less than mere weeks ago, he knew of only two Holmes siblings – now there were three. Up until the night of Sherrinford, John had assumed that the scant references he’d caught to Redbeard – uttered by Magnussen and scrawled in Mycroft’s notebook – were reminders of a beloved family pet. Now the loss of Redbeard had given way to the horrors of what had happened to Victor Trevor.

And just as recently as Sherlock’s birthday, John was certain that Irene Adler was “The Woman” for his friend. So convinced was John, in fact, that he had gone to the wall for it after hearing the trademark text-alert moaning out of Sherlock’s phone. Happy Birthday indeed.

“She’s alive,” he’d yelled.

“She loves you,” he’d claimed.

“And do you have the faintest idea how lucky you are?” he’d pleaded, the memory of Mary reverberating in the tension between the two men.

A romantic entanglement would complete Sherlock Holmes as a human being, John still stood by that. But how naive John now realised he had been to believe that Irene Adler the person to whom Sherlock would be, could be, should be entangled.

John’s sentiment was true, he was just completely off about the target, John mused as he threw a stuffed toy in the direction of the toybox – and missed.

So single-minded was John’s opinion on the matter of Sherlock and The Woman that there was no doubt in his mind that the “I love you” engraved on the coffin at Sherrinford was written from Irene. He never for a moment considered it could be Molly’s words – or Sherlock’s words to Molly.

Words on a coffin are always written by those left behind, not by those whose remains are held within. Eurus knew her brother better than even John did.

Sherlock never shared John’s doubts about who the coffin belonged to, judging by how swiftly his friend had corrected him.

“Unmarried. Practical about death. Alone.” Sherlock’s voice had faltered on the last word. There was a depth of feeling there. A culpability – perhaps?

John never asked Molly why her engagement ended, but it did seem to coincide with the time of John and Mary’s wedding. A fork to the leg doesn’t a lasting union make, he thought wryly as he dried and put the cutlery away.

Where John was so certain the coffin was Irene’s, Sherlock for his part knew exactly who the target of Eurus’ game would be. Even if that phone call was the first time Molly had ever said the words, she had shown Sherlock the truth in a thousand big and small ways.

Of course there were hints John reflected as he sat in the quiet of his kitchen, nursing a coffee: Molly setting Sherlock to rights that Christmas when he’d insulted and humiliated her; Sherlock asking Molly to help him fake his death; Three slaps to the face for a failed drug test in the basement lab at Barts.

But even more recently, John could see now how the relationship between the detective and his pathologist had shifted. Small, inconsequential details he’d overlooked at the time now held more meaning and significance.

Like the afternoon Molly had met them both for birthday cake. Unlike John, for whom the date of Sherlock’s birth had just been revealed, Molly was already aware of the significance of the day. She’d even supplied novelty candles with his age on them – a 3 and a 9.

At the time, John dismissed it; Molly had, after all, been the one to sign Sherlock’s (fake) death certificate.

But there was something in the ease at which they ordered, reflecting a familiarity with the menu. Sherlock and Molly had done this before. On his previous birthdays John wondered? Or hers?

She ordered a red velvet cake for herself, but only had one bite. Molly didn’t like red velvet, her tastes, in so far as John had ever seen them, tended towards caramel. The cake was never meant for her. She had ordered it because it was Sherlock’s favourite. She wanted him to take it from her – and knowing Sherlock’s recent weight-loss, there was method there. But more than that, Sherlock enjoyed something more if it had been given to him from her. The smallest of gifts for the joy-starved recovering-addict.

In the midst of the precarious time of Sherlock’s detox and recovery – John had never given it a second thought that Molly was the only one Sherlock would allow to take the night shift babysitting him. When he was at his most vulnerable, Sherlock wanted only Molly to see him.

What had he called out to her in the darkness of the night? What secrets had been shared? What side of Sherlock had only Molly seen?

Casting a glance over at his still silent friend, John was overcome. He had seen it all, but had not yet perceived. But now it was all too clear: Molly Hooper was the only one with the power to complete Sherlock Holmes as a person. And it seemed that now Sherlock agreed – although too late.

While the longer it continued, the more John found Sherlock’s still, statuesque form concerning, Rosie found nothing but amusement in the fact that there was an adult she could climb all over without causing a single reaction. Sherlock was her new oversized-toy, sitting on the lounge among a collection of her dollies and teddies.

Sherlock stayed in his fugue even when Mrs Hudson came for a visit on Monday. It was then that John learned how Mycroft had managed explaining Molly’s unique brand of amnesia with their wider network of friends.

“I couldn’t believe it when the doctor told me about Molly!” Mrs H shared over tea and scones.

If Sherlock was listening, there was no outward sign.

The older woman continued. “It’s such a strange form of amnesia – completely forgetting,” she dropped her voice to a whisper and with a nod toward Sherlock, continued, “forgetting Sherlock – of all people!”

“It certainly doesn’t seem like the way amnesia tends to work,” John agreed, unable from stopping himself at hinting at the reality of the situation.

Mrs Hudson didn’t take the bait. “It must have been some strong ether she accidentally mixed in the lab-”

John looked towards Sherlock for any sign, any reaction. Nothing.

“-because it is odd,” Mrs H continued between sips of tea, “Molly making a mistake like that. It doesn’t seem like something she would do.”

“It is what it is,” John said – their code, meant more to comfort Sherlock than to converse with his companion.

John’s former landlady leaned in in a conspiratorial whisper. “How’s he taking it?”

John didn’t answer, only shrugging. Sherlock’s silence spoke volumes.

She soon left with a kiss on Rosie’s cheek and a solemn charge for John. “Please - look after him.” A tight hand grip on John’s shoulder reminded them both of how precarious Sherlock’s sobriety had become.

Mrs Hudson wasn’t the only one of their friends to reach out. John had received texts from others – their reactions a reflection of their feelings towards Sherlock.   
Mike Samford was all work – just happy that Mycroft’s men had cleaned up the “biohazard” before word got out.

Anderson was heartbroken – and feared what a world without Sherlock could possibly be like.

Donovan was her usual brand of snark, calling Molly a “lucky woman,” to have no memories of Sherlock.

Greg came by a day later with a case, a pawn-broker, whose night-job, sitting in an office in Soho and tweeting out (@red-headed-league) the contents of the 1892 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, ended just one day before his Pawn Shop was robbed.

John was intrigued, but even a case he assumed Sherlock would rate as an 8 wasn’t enough to bring Sherlock back to reality.

Standing at the door while he left, Greg made an observation that hadn’t yet occurred to John.  
“I just can’t imagine Molly without–“ he swallowed, “well, without – her feelings for Sherlock. She’s the only one of us who not only puts up with his crap, but that Sherlock actually listens to when she’s told him to piss off!”

John nodded in agreement.

The DI Continued, “Think of how many cases he’s been able to solve because of her patience with him?”

All of them – Greg, Mrs H, Anderson, Donovan and Mike had been given the same instructions: Molly’s mind was now fragile as a result of the “accident”, and any mention of her past with Sherlock could cause even more damage.

As for Molly, she had been fed the same cover story as the rest of them – the accident in the lab was a panacea, a balm explaining any blanks in her memory, or any inconsistencies Sherlock’s absence left for her.

How weird it must have felt – to forget something, but forget it so deeply you don’t even know you’ve forgotten it, John pondered.

John hadn’t exactly been avoiding Molly, but he certainly didn’t know how to handle everything – especially what for Molly would appear to be the sudden appearance in John’s flat of a stranger. And it seemed John was stuck with Sherlock – at least for the time being while Baker Street was being rebuilt.

But John wouldn’t be able to keep Molly away from her Goddaughter forever.

It was inevitable – Molly Hooper would have no choice but to meet Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

All day at Barts, Molly was waiting for something to happen. She couldn’t stop glancing up from her work at odd moments, looking towards the door, expecting it to swing open and for her to be interrupted by-

Who?

No interruptions ever came. Molly worked in the still silence of the basement, just like every day since she started at Barts.

Not that she didn’t have lots to occupy her – there was a backlog of tests to be performed from when the lab had been closed after her accident. Molly bristled to think of the problems she had caused.

In all her years as a Specialist Registrar, she’d never managed more than a drop or two of spilled chemicals – but somehow, just days ago, she had inadvertently created a toxic combination so strong as to knock her out and rule the lab a biohazard zone for 48 hours.

The weirdest part was that Molly couldn’t even remember being at work that day.

Molly was mortified when Mike told her what had happened, and how an intern had discovered her, unconscious. More concerning still was that she had no memory of her two-night hospital stay. All she remembered was waking up in her bed, as if the two days before had never happened.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. More than just her recent amnesia, Molly had been warned in her clearance physical – performed by Dr Blevins – to expect “memory gaps” – times and dates she couldn’t account for.

The more Molly thought about it, the more incomplete memories she discovered:

A vague memory of an experiment with a dead body and a riding crop, but Molly couldn’t see herself being the one to flog a corpse. Or a time when two men with different ages, different jobs, and no obvious connection, both shared matching black tattoos on their feet. Detective Dimmock was surprised to see the tattoos – but Molly had no memory of how, when or why they were pointed out to him.

What worried Molly the most were her memories of Mary. Of course she could remember her friend, her smile, the jokes they shared, and the love she radiated for her precious daughter Rosie. But there were moments that as Molly considered them seemed to be missing key details. Information she should have known.

Why was Molly relieved when John and Mary got together? It was almost as if she knew John had needed the companionship – but from Molly’s recollection, John had always been a bachelor, living alone in the flat above Mrs Hudson at Baker Street. What could change to make Molly suddenly fear John being alone?

What of the night of John and Mary’s engagement? Molly could recall mortified laughter when Mary told her the story – but why? What happened?

And when Mary was pregnant, why did John move back into his flat above Mrs Hudson for a few months, leaving Mary alone?

And after Mary’s death, Molly had the distinct feeling of grief upon grief. Like in addition to losing Mary came the fear of losing something else, or someone – but it wasn’t John or Rosie, and Mrs Hudson had always been the picture of good health – bad hip notwithstanding.

And strange, Molly considered, that Rosie had two Godmothers in herself and Mrs Hudson, but no Godfather?

As the thoughts swirled around her mind, Molly found herself drawn into a feeling of deep vertigo. With so many questions, she knew there was only one person who held the answers.

“Hi John, I’ve had a bad day. Just wondering if I could join you and Rosie for dinner?”

Instead of his usual enthusiasm, there was a pause down the line.  
“If it’s a bad time, I can-“ She started.

“No!” John interrupted, “It’s just, I have a friend staying over.”

“Oh!” She didn’t mean for her judgement to be so obvious in just one syllable.

“Not like that!” John’s insistence assured Molly that it wasn’t a woman.

“He’s just, well – I can’t really explain over the phone. Just – come over. We’ll see you in 10.”

Molly hung up the phone, hoping that John Watson could give her the answers she sought.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has shared their enthusiasm for this fic. I'd had a bad week health-wise, but knowing there were so many people keen to read what happens next is what has kept me motivated to keep updating.
> 
> This next chapter was really hard to write - I hope you all enjoy it.

John ended the call with Molly and looked over at his friend, still lying lifeless on the lounge. John knew how useless it was to try to communicate with Sherlock when he was deep in his mind palace. But John thought it was worth a try.

“Did you hear that, Sherlock?”

Nothing.

“That was Molly on the phone.”

Not even a twitch.

“She’s coming over for dinner.”

Maybe, just maybe, if John concentrated he could see Sherlock’s breath hitch – almost imperceptibly.

“So you can either snap out of it and show her what kind of man Sherlock Holmes is-“

Still nothing.

Resigned, John finished – “or you can lie there and keep sulking.”

What John Watson didn’t know was that Sherlock wasn’t sulking; he was working.

One of the incalculable number of things that Mary’s bullet had shown Sherlock was that within his Mind Palace resided a complete, super-sensory, true-to-life version of Molly Hooper. That despite never consciously attempting to do so, he had recorded every single interaction they’d had, every cadence of her voice, and all the wisdom and knowledge she’d ever shared with him.

The version of Molly who resided in his mind palace had saved him before, he hoped now to return the favour.

Sherlock stood in Molly’s kitchen. Molly was bending over the sink, just as she had been when Eurus called. Everything was identical – her rainbow spotted jumper, her straight long ponytail, and the dried tears shed just before Eurus’ cameras had been turned on.

Sherlock walked up to her, bending over to look at her more closely.  
“You look sad,” he said to her.

Molly turned to meet his eyeline. “Yes,” she agreed.

Over on the far countertop, Molly’s phone rang.

“Stop!” he commanded the phone. The ringing ceased.

Sherlock didn’t always have the power to control everything in his mind palace, but he enjoyed it when he could.

Molly stood up straight, her eyes questioning.

“Why are you so sad?” He asked her.

“Why does it matter?” She challenged him. He loved that she challenged him.

“I want to know,” he said as the phone rang again.

He couldn’t change what happened, couldn’t take the words back, or erase their impact on her. Everything that happened that day would lead to their inevitable end.

“Let’s go,” he was desperate. He couldn’t watch the call again, wasn’t strong enough to see her pain.

Molly reached out, taking Sherlock by the hand. He’d felt her hands before – light brushes when they’d passed beakers and test results in the lab, or nimble, deft as she examined him on countless occasions, or three harsh, angry (well-deserved) slaps to his face.

But never had her fingers been intertwined with his. He had no category for the feeling, could only imagine a gesture so natural, simple, and yet for Sherlock Holmes entirely intimate.

He swallowed, before remembering what they were there for in the first place.

“Where are we going?” Sherlock asked.

“Back to the beginning.” Molly said.

She didn’t take him to the beginning exactly. She skipped over the day they met – a perfunctory handshake in the lab with Mike Samford doing the honours of introducing his newest Pathologist. Nothing of note there.

Instead, they arrived at the first day Sherlock realised that perhaps Molly did have feelings for him. There was one day in particular when it dawned on Sherlock the reason Molly helped him, prioritized his tests and provided him with body parts to experiment on, wasn’t just because of professional interest.

Sherlock and Molly stood in Barts lab watching their younger counterparts. He – whipping a corpse, she, watching with enraptured attention.

“I’m about to ask you out for coffee,” the older Molly said to the older Sherlock.

Sherlock marveled at the difference between the two women – well, two of the same woman.

Molly in the mortuary was bouncing on the balls of her feet, full of nervous energy as she watched Sherlock’s younger self from behind the glass. She had probably been planning this for weeks. Or were the nerves a side-effect of his presence?

But the Molly who stood beside Sherlock, the Molly whose image had been seared into his retina through the screen at Sherrinford, held no such fear, and exhibited no nerves in his presence. She had truly become his equal – standing up to him with a force that neither John nor Mrs Hudson were ever able to muster.

“Bad day was it?” The younger Molly began, stifling a laugh.

The older Molly circled her younger counterpart, studying her. “This is how it starts, you know. The cycle. I give you my heart and you trample on it. Over and over.”

“I’d never meant-“ Sherlock began, only to be distracted by the actions of his younger self.

The younger Sherlock barely looked at Molly, where his elder counterpart could barely take his eyes off her, transfixed by the joy she still held, so stark in contrast to the grief and pain radiating off her older self.

Sherlock willed his younger self to look up, to see what back then he was obviously so blind to.

“I need to know what bruises form in the next twenty minutes, a man’s alibi depends on it. Text me.” Sherlock said, his eyes buried in his notebook.

After a moment, he looked up.

“You’ve noticed my lipstick,” the older Molly noted.

“Yes.” Both Sherlocks said in unison.

The older Molly stood next to her younger self, surveying her appearance.

“You’ve got a shirt that matches it, a reddish-maroon one. You wore it yesterday. I chose the shade deliberately. Went to three different Tescos to find it.”

“I know.” Both Sherlocks replied.

“So what will you do with her heart?” The older Molly challenged the younger Sherlock.

The scene played out just as it had happened back then – letting her down gently with black, two sugars.

The scene paused with Molly on the way out to make Sherlock’s coffee. Although trying her best to mask it, the disappointment on her face was unmistakable. The younger Sherlock, on the other hand, showed no evidence that he was aware of the hurt he’d just caused her.

“What if you’d taken me up on it? The coffee? How would that have played out?” His Molly asked.

Sherlock and Molly from after the phone call stood and watched their younger selves.

In another world, in another reality of Sherlock’s own making, there was a version of Sherlock who had indeed gone back into the mortuary to retrieve his riding crop after his first meeting with John Watson - but that’s not all he’d retrieved.

Sherlock imagined how it would all play out.

“I’m sorry Molly – earlier, when you asked if I wanted coffee-“ He began, and paused. Nervous? Unsure? Maybe he’d misread the signals.

“Yes.” Her eyes lighting up, hopeful.

“You weren’t taking an order, were you?” Buoyed by her response to him. More confidence now.

“No.” A moment of fear. Maybe he’d returned not to correct his mistake, but to make sure she never tried to ask him out again. Wrapping up her relationship hopes in one small act.

Sherlock continued. “You were asking me out.”

“Yes.”

He watched as she steeled herself for the letdown.

“Does the offer still stand?”

Her face beamed in the brightest smile. Sherlock had taken the memory from the day Molly held Rosie for the first time. There was a pang in his chest to realise that he’d never actually made her that happy – not once in their almost decade-long acquaintance.

Without warning, both pairs were soon stood in front of the two cafes across the road from Barts. The first, Beppe’s, was small, with décor that had lasted certainly from last century, perhaps even as old as Sherlock and Molly were. The second, 21 west, was more modern, with large glass windows and a sleek, modern kit-out.

“You prefer the service and eclectic atmosphere at Beppe’s but you’ll choose 21 because it’s more hip and you think I’d like it better. You’d be wrong, by the way. I’d prefer to be where you’re the most comfortable.”

“Well, I don’t know you that well, yet,” Molly said in defence of her younger self’s hypothetical choices.

The Detective and the Pathologist followed their doppelgangers into the café.

“You’re nervous, look at your shaking hands,” he pointed out to Molly.

His Molly hadn’t shown nerves in his presence – not since that day after the fall and the conversation in Shilcott’s hallway, when he’d sent her off with another man, sealing it with a kiss.

The pair watched their younger selves sit down, waiting for a waiter to take their order.

“What are you hoping will happen?” He said it to either Molly, but he could just as well have been asking himself.

Molly was silent. If anyone was going to solve this puzzle, it would be Sherlock.

In an instant he played out every scenario he could think of.

Coffee today with pleasant conversation, learning about each other’s pasts, families, likes and dislikes. Dinner next week capped off with a kiss on the cheek, Sherlock testing the waters with his first romantic contact with a woman since Uni. A few weeks later, the two would share their first real kiss after he doubled back to thank her for her assistance showing Dimmock the Jade-Lotus tattoos. Later still, their first night together, adrenaline-pumping, life-affirming sex after rescuing John and Sarah from certain death.

Or, skip the coffee, skip the dating, pull her into an alleyway on the way back to her flat and give her no doubts about his intentions. Sherlock channeling the lothario he was at uni – minus the narcotics.

Or, using a line he was soon to use on John, “I consider myself married to my work,” but adding, “But I’m not a very faithful spouse.”

Regardless of how they got there, all scenarios ended the same way – panic rising when Jim Moriarty claimed that he would burn the heart out of him.

Sherlock’s retort, “I’ve been reliably informed I don’t have one.” True when he first said it. A lie in the new reality of Sherlock’s making. His first thought would be of Molly.

And so, just as they began, all paths would end with Sherlock replacing the mask of the, cold, cruel, and calculating detective. An act to save her life.

Their younger selves disappeared, leaving Sherlock standing alone outside the café near Barts with the last image of His Molly he’d seen – albeit through a television screen. The Molly whose heart was broken.

Panic rose. “He’s not ready yet! Even if he was aware of your feelings, he’s not capable of-“

“Of what? Of Love?” Molly interrupted, a cynical tinge to her voice that Sherlock wasn’t used to hearing.

Sherlock shook his head. “Of losing you!” He yelled then. He’d never yelled at Molly before. The shock in her wide brown eyes shot a dagger through his heart.

Immediately he softened his tone. “He’s afraid. I’m afraid.”

Victor Trevor, once a ghost, a phantom, a false memory, now brought clarity to everything Sherlock once thought obtuse.

Molly placed her hand on his cheek. Soft. It grounded him. Brought him back.

“And now? What if you took me out for coffee now?”

Sherlock was indignant. “You know I did try again later – I asked you out for chips, if you’ll recall.”

She’d said no – well, actually, she didn’t say no. She didn’t address his invitation at all. Instead prattled on about the fiancé as if that was a reason not to have a meal with a friend, or to question the “real” reason for the day they’d spent as colleagues.

“What if you said yes? What if you’d kept your ring at home that day? What if you’d been willing to break it off with Meat-Dagger earlier?”

Gone was the café outside Barts. Instead, the two stood outside The Golden Hind, the chip shop just off the Marlybone road that he’d asked Molly to accompany him to that day.

The Sherlock who had just come back from the dead held open the door and ushered his crime-solving partner inside, gesturing to a booth in the back corner, away from the bustle of the busy front-counter.

“See? It’s not that bad,” the detective said to his partner, as if he’d been able to convince her that despite the fiancé, despite the charged subtext that had so permeated their day together, chips were in fact just chips.

Her cheeks were reddened from the cold.

“What comes after dinner?” Molly asked the Sherlock from Sherrinford while they watched their younger selves order.

Sherlock hadn’t planned that far ahead.

“What had you planned?” His Molly persisted.

“I missed you,” was all Sherlock could supply.

Molly was confused. “You’d seen me at Barts just days before.”

Standing in the locker room. She’d thrown her arms around him in a tight embrace and Sherlock didn’t want to admit to himself how much he’d been looking forward to it.

“I missed that you missed me. You were the only person who knew I was alive – well, aside from Mycroft – and I needed you to miss me. It kept me alive, gave me purpose.”

“I did miss you.”

“And when I returned, I wanted it to be different.”

“What did you want?”

Sherlock didn’t have an answer.

Molly persisted. “Sherlock, what would have happened if we’d gone out for chips?”

As if on cue, the restaurant came to life. Two plates of food were placed before the younger pair while their older counterparts watched on – battered flat fish for him, grilled brim for her – both accompanied by towering piles of fresh-cut chips.

“Anything for Mr Holmes!” Enrico, the portly, balding, owner smiled proudly, grasping Sherlock’s shoulder and giving it a solid shake. “He’s a good man, you know!” He said, turning to Molly.

“What makes you say that?” Molly asked, popping a chip into her mouth.

“We needn’t bore Molly with the story,” Sherlock said, an attempt at false humility, but all the while wanting Molly to know.

“Nonsense!” Enrico would say as he slid into the booth, pushing Sherlock along to make room.

“This man saved my life.”

“And here I was thinking you’d just helped him put up some shelves,” Molly smiled wryly. He loved it when she did that.

Enrico continued. “He did. I’d invited him over one afternoon when my tradesmen deserted me on short notice. I was engaged at the time. Katarina was her name.”

“Russian?” Molly attempted to deduce.

“No. Welsh.” Sherlock corrected, knowing that he too had made the same mistake.

“I thought Katarina was the one, but I didn’t realise that I was about to make the mistake of a lifetime. One conversation with my fiancé and Sherlock told me that I was, in fact, in love with Ginny,” Enrico pointed out the woman who was his wife, currently stood by the counter.

“I’d worked with her for years but never saw what was right in front of me. I broke it off with Katarina and Ginny and I have been happily together ever since.”

“You thought she was the love of your life,” Molly echoed Sherlock’s words from earlier in the day.

The older Molly turned her attention to Sherlock.

“And then what? You let him share his story and you thought I’d immediately break it off with Tom and- what exactly?”

“You broke it off eventually,” Sherlock pointed out, deliberately avoiding the rest of Molly’s question.

“But if I’d broken it off with Tom – what next? How would you take it when you discovered Magnussen was looking for your pressure point?”

Leaving their counterparts in the chip shop, Sherlock and Molly were now stood at the back of the hall at John and Mary’s wedding. On stage, the younger Sherlock was playing his violin while the younger Molly stood, watching with enraptured attention.

“You’re going to break up with him soon.”

Molly nodded. “Tonight.”

“It could have gone differently. You’re watching me leave.”

“I am.”

“You can always see me.” A thought that always made him smile.

“I can.”

Sherlock and Molly followed his younger self outside, watching him wrap his Belstaff around himself, his armour.

Back at the wedding, the other Molly stayed behind, dancing.

“Why didn’t you follow me?” A question he’d always wanted to know the answer to.

“I don’t know.” A question only the real Molly could answer.

They followed Sherlock down the path, away from the Orangery. “I went and scored that night, I’d told myself it was for the case, for Magnussen but-“

Molly again laced her fingers with his. “Let me follow you. Let me stop you,” she offered.

Sherlock shook his head. “We’re not ready yet.”

The events of the next few years played out in a second: Relapse. Jeannine. Execution. Exile. Relapse. again. Norbury. Mary. A third relapse.

“We’re not ready,” Sherlock repeated.

Molly placed a hand on his cheek, steeling his memories. Giving him focus just as she had when he was shot. “And later?” She asked. “Why did you come and see me that day?”

“What day?”

She led him to the footpath just outside John’s house. Days after Mary had been shot. He turned away, couldn’t watch Molly as she broke his heart – couldn’t watch himself lose John and Molly in addition to Mary – not again.

“Why did you come?” His Molly asked.

Sherlock swallowed. “I wanted to comfort you. I needed you to comfort me.”

Sherlock considered for a moment. “What if Rosie was asleep? What if John hadn’t given you the note? What if you’d invited me in?”

Perhaps that afternoon they would have fallen into each other’s arms and into each other’s beds.

But the message from Mary was too clear. Sherlock had no other way to save John Watson.

Molly would still have to watch him relapse. She would still have to nurse him back from the brink.

Molly filled in the rest. “The phonecall would have stayed the same, though. Perhaps my heart would be even more broken.”

Sherlock was bombarded by images of their relationship – of what was, of what could have been. Real hurtful words at Christmas followed by sincere apologies. Possible dates that led to potential relationships. Real peril from Moriarty. Actual separation for two years while he was dead. Genuine moments of affection that could turn into something more. Real failures with Magnussen, Mary. Relapse – over and over.

There was nothing he could have done. There was no right time for them. Not at the chippy after their cases. Not after Mary’s death. Certainly not when she’d asked him out for coffee all those years ago.

There was no other time.

There was nothing left in his mind palace. Not even Molly. He was entirely alone.

He called out into the void. “Molly. Come back! I’m ready, Molly-”

From outside his mind he heard a familiar voice.

“Sherlock, I’m here, come back to me.”

Sherlock opened his eyes to find Molly, sat on the floor in John’s lounge room, Rosie on her lap, reading a book.

Her singsong voice supplied, “He stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night into his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him and it was still hot.”

He knew what he had to do.

Back in the real world, a Molly Hooper who had no memories of Sherlock Holmes – apart from their brief conversation at Barts the other night – looked up from the finished book and caught John Watson’s strange friend looking at her intently.

“Oh, I’m sorry if I woke you,” she stood, walking over to replace the book on the bookshelf. Rosie remained playing with toys on the floor.

“No, it’s exactly what I needed. Thank you.” He meant it.

Sherlock righted himself, brushing off his clothing and standing on legs stiff from lack of use.

Molly turned to face him. “We weren’t properly introduced the other night. I’m Molly Hooper.”

Sherlock swallowed, steeling himself. “Pleased to meet you, Molly. I’m Sherlock Holmes.”

He reached out a hand to shake hers. As skin touched skin Sherlock’s breath hitched slightly.

What Sherlock saw, but didn’t perceive, was that Molly’s breath did the exact same thing.

And so it began, again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner with Mr Holmes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many apologies. All I can say is that mental health difficulties are not conducive to good writing habits. Also, the more people love this fic the harder it is for me to write because I'd hate to let you down!  
But here we are, the long-awaited chapter where Molly "meets" Sherlock. I hope you like it.  
Comments, kudos and encouragements are better than candy! Thanks again for your patience.

“Well, that went rather well,” Sherlock smiled smugly at his friend while the two men were stood by the door having just seen Molly to the cab after dinner.

John’s eyes grew wider than saucepans. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’ve established myself in Molly’s life, I’ve given myself an excuse to see her again-“

“-you’ve come perilously close to reminding her of your time together, you’ve left such clear signs of your past that they might as well be flashing in bright neon,” John explained, exasperated.

“I don’t see your point,” Sherlock shook his head.

“Well, mate,“ John began, “ if you’re trying to do everything Mycroft said not to, then yes, you’re doing a brilliant job.”

\---

In the cab on the way home, Molly couldn’t stop thinking about the night’s strange series of events, and the even stranger Sherlock Holmes. She couldn’t help wondering about him – what life he had led, and what exactly was his connection to John and Mary. The evening had only raised more questions than answers.

John had met her at the door, Rosie in his arms. Her little chubby arms reached out for Molly and she took her from John, bouncing her on her hip.

John took this moment to join Molly outside, pulling the door behind him nearly shut.

“Are we going out?” Molly asked, confused.

“No, I just – well, like I said on the phone - I have a friend over,” his head tilted towards the house.

“Yes, you did mention that,” Molly said slowly, carefully.

“Well, he’s-“ John stopped, a loss for words. “Actually, I don’t know what I can say,” he said, more to himself than to Molly.

“How about I just meet him for myself?” Molly smiled wryly.

John still didn’t move from the door. “He’s not entirely awake at the moment. He can spend hours, sometimes days like this, it’s like he’s only living in his mind.”

Molly had never heard of something so odd. Her doctor’s training kicked in. “How long has it been?”

“Three days,” there was a deep concern in John’s tone, something he wasn’t sharing with her, but Molly didn’t dare probe too deeply.

Instead, she opted for levity. “Well, if he stays that way maybe I won’t even have to meet him at all,” she laughed. John didn’t join her.

John moved out of the doorway and Molly put Rosie down, watching her run into the lounge room and point at the sleeping man. There was no mistaking the noises of excitement that came out of her chubby 10-month-old mouth as she looked between the man and Molly expectantly.

Molly recognised the man lying on the lounge from the other night in the lab - those sharp cheekbones and wild untamed hair were certainly striking features. She remembered the steely blue-green eyes as well, although she couldn’t see them as for all intents and purposes it looked as if he was sleeping. But, it wasn’t sleeping, it was something deeper than that, almost catatonic .

“Rosie sure seems taken with him,” Molly stifled a laugh when she noticed he was all but covered in dolls and teddies and blankets.

“She’s used to him,” John coughed wildly, like he was almost choking on the words, “I mean, she’s used to him lying there – it has been a few days.”

John quickly excused himself, as if needing desperately to be elsewhere. It seemed so odd, John had never shown any signs of discomfort in her presence before.

Molly sat on the floor next to Rosie as she pottered around setting up her plastic tea-set for a teddy bear tea-party. She wanted to give her gorgeous goddaughter all the attention she deserved, but it really was distracting having the form of a 6-foot-something sleeping man just feet from her.

After a time, she decided to grab some books to read to her Goddaughter. Rosie always loved it when Molly read to her.

She had just finished “Where the Wild Things Are” when the strange man seemed to come out of his trance. There was something in the way he looked at her, intent and perceptive, but with a scientist’s eye – like she was some kind of experiment and he was charting every observation. Did he look at everyone like that, she wondered.

After their introductions where she learned his name – and realised his relationship to Mycroft Holmes – John rushed into the room, breathless, eyes wide with concern.

“Oh, you’re awake,” he said to his friend. “Molly, have you met Sherlock?” he asked.

“Yes, well, we sort of met the other night, unofficially.”

John shot Sherlock a look of daggers. Molly had no idea why.

“I was meeting my brother,” Sherlock explained. “And I mistook Dr Hooper for someone else.” There was something in the way he emphasized the word mistook, but Molly couldn’t grasp the meaning behind it.

“Someone you’ve done wrong by, judging by the apology you gave me,” Molly laughed. Neither men joined in.

The awkwardness of that moment was just the beginning. Over dinner it was almost as if neither men knew anything about their history together.

“How long have you known each other?” Molly asked.

“10 years,” Sherlock answered. “Not long,” John said over him.

Molly chuckled, “Well which one is it?” she asked.

John silenced Sherlock with a look. “Well, ten years isn’t long in relative terms of a lifetime, right?” John attempted to explain.

“Why are you in town, Sherlock?” Molly asked.

“I live here,” Sherlock said.

John jumped in. “He’s moved back to London for work. Sherlock spent two years on the continent.” John emphasised the last word in a way that made Molly wonder just exactly what was Sherlock’s reason for being in Europe.

John continued, “He’ll be living here for a while and moving into my old flat once Mrs H. is done with the repairs.”

“So strange – a bomb! I’d never thought Baker Street would ever be the site of something so dramatic!”

The two men seemed like they were stifling a laugh, although Molly wondered whatever could be amusing about a bomb in John’s old flat.

“How did you meet?” Molly changed the subject.

“Through Stamford.” “Through work,” the men said simultaneously.

Molly arched her eyebrow.

“Sherlock and I met because he sometimes requires my help in his work. And Stamford’s too.”

“In fact, Dr Hooper, I may require your assistance on occasion if you’ll indulge me.”

John’s fork clattered to the floor. As he bent down to grab it, he seemed to be possessed by a coughing fit.

Sherlock ignored him.

“What do you do?” Molly asked once John’s coughing abated.

“Consulting detective.” “Unemployed,” the men talked over each other, again.

“Sherlock doesn’t have a job in the conventional sense of the word,” John explained.

“What’s a consulting detective?” Molly asked, unable to hide her fascination, although the term did seem oddly familiar.

John rolled his eyes, “Don’t get him started!”

The way Sherlock spoke it was as if he relished in the chance to explain his work. “When the police are out of their depths – which is their natural state most of the time –“

“-They call you,” Molly finished, to the astonishment of both men. For Molly, she knew that she’d never heard of such a thing before, but at the same time she knew exactly what Sherlock was speaking about.

Molly’s eyes lit up. “That sounds brilliant! Of course, I’d love to help. But you’ll need hospital credentials of course.”

Sherlock waved dismissively, “My brother has already provided me with them – “

“-That’s why he was there the other night,” John continued.

“I’ll keep an eye out for you around Bart’s then,” Molly smiled, and meant it. She was keen to learn more about this odd man. What was he doing in Europe all this time? If he was so close to John why wasn’t he at their wedding?

But the thing that plagued Molly more than anything was why was this stranger so familiar to her, almost as if they’d met in a dream or a past life, if Molly believed in such things.

“But enough about me, Molly,” Sherlock said as John cleared the plates from dinner and went to get dessert from the kitchen, “What about you?”

Molly took a sip of wine, “What about me?” she asked, playing coy, almost flirting. The wine must have started going to her head.

“When did you meet my brother?”

That wasn’t the question Molly was expecting. She tried recalling a memory but for some reason drew a blank. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember,” she said, taking a look at the glass in her hand, “I must have had more to drink than I realised.”

“Sherlock!” John called from the kitchen, “Can you help me please?” He said.

“One minute John,” Sherlock dismissed him.

“And I see you’re unmarried, have you ever been married?” he asked.

Molly looked at her ring finger.

“I was engaged once, to a man named Tom.”

“Why did you break it off?”

Molly’s heartrate increased, her breathing came in fits, there was something wrong, something missing, something about her engagement’s ending that she couldn’t quite grasp, couldn’t possibly explain.

“I ah, I’m sorry, I don’t feel-“

From the kitchen came a crash that brought Molly back to reality.

“Sherlock, come in here, I’ve dropped the apple crumble.”

While the two men tended to the mess, Molly’s breathing returned to normal, the feeling of loss, of confusion, of blanks in her memory faded away.

The night ended with a kiss on the cheek from John and a handshake from Sherlock.

When she took his hand, Molly noticed the sharp jagged cuts on his knuckles. Molly couldn’t stop herself from running a tender finger along the raised welts.

“What on earth happened to you?”

For once, John didn’t try to preempt his friend’s response to her question. Instead, he stared at Sherlock expectantly.

“That’s a story for another day, Molly. I promise one day, I’ll tell you all about it.”

Once home, Molly shucked off her coat and placed it on the hook on the back of the door. She stopped for a moment, staring at the vacant hook next to it. There was something missing – another jacket. But she couldn’t picture it. Not hers, there was a cologne smell, something familiar, but missing. Not Tom’s – his male perfume of choice was LYNX body spray.  
  


Molly stood in her kitchen as the kettle boiled. Something about the act reminded her of John’s friend again. They didn’t even drink tea after dinner, so Molly couldn’t understand why the act of making tea and Sherlock were linked in her mind. She glanced at her phone, almost expecting it to ring, imagining Sherlock as the one to be calling – but that was impossible – he didn’t even have her number.

The phone didn’t ring. Molly was relieved. Something about tea, Sherlock and a phone call was a combination that made bile rise in her throat and made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. 

Once her chamomile tea was made, Molly sat in her armchair and was struck by her fascination with this man – just after two meetings.

He was attractive, that was sure, but there was something else about him. She watched how the two men were like with each other, nattering like the oldest of friends. She wondered what history lay between them – obviously a deep friendship.

But where was Sherlock when Mary died?

And why hadn’t he had more of a hand in Rosie’s life?

More than anything, Molly wanted to know where this man had been, what life he had lived, and what had led to him becoming a consulting detective in the first place. She felt like there was a story in his life that she longed to know. One that felt strangely familiar, yet oddly foreign.

He said he’d be needing her help on occasion – but Molly had no idea that meant that he’d be in her lab just the next day.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one weekend! Christmas, New Years and Birthdays all rolled into one, perhaps!
> 
> This chapter (and this speed at which I've been able to post it) is all because of my patient and devoted readers and commentors, especially Evie89, Juldooz and Ohgodbenny - you are all wonderful supporters and I'm honoured to write for you enjoyment. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chaper.

“We really should have gotten our stories straight,” Sherlock said as he passed a dishtowel to John.

“Well, we could have if you hadn’t been having a mope for the last three days” John said as he opened the dishwasher, ready to unpack its freshly-cleaned contents.

“I wasn’t moping, I was reviewing all available data.”

John rolled his eyes. Only Sherlock could make love sound like a computer program.

“And?” John looked at his friend intently.

“And I’ve come to the conclusion that there was no possible way that Molly and I could have started a romantic relationship any earlier than now.”

Sherlock’s answer didn’t answer anything in John’s book. “Which means?”

Sherlock’s eyes gleamed the same way they did when he had a case. “I means I’ll start at the beginning.”

“What on earth does that mean?” John called after Sherlock, but his friend was gone – he had a list to write.

\---

Sonder (noun, neologism): the profound feeling that everyone you meet has an intricate life with experiences memories and emotions as complex as one’s own.

A new word, for a new emotion Molly had been feeling ever since that night Sherlock Holmes had come into her morgue and into her life.

Here was a remarkable man, genius, perceptive, no doubt an asset to any law enforcement he would choose to side with, and yet to her he was completely unknown.

If their dinner together at John’s had told Molly anything, it was that Sherlock Holmes may have been a mere stranger until days ago, but he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, a fact that was clear when he burst through the doors into her basement lab the next day.

“Molly, I was wondering if you could help me with an experiment?”

There was something about the way he said the word experiment that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge, and the edges of her vision turn black. She reached out for the bench, knocking a tray of implements onto the ground. The crash brought her back to reality.

Sherlock was by her side in an instant, placing two sturdy hands on her shoulders.

“Are you ok?” his eyes were wide, peering intently into hers.

“Something in the way you said – experiment – it,” Molly paused, her eyes now able to focus again on his. “I don’t know what it was. Sorry.”

There was a flash of recognition in his eyes that disappeared as soon as it arrived.

soon regained her composure, standing again and adjusting her lab coat Molly. “Is this for one of your cases?” she asked.

“Sort of.” His evasive answer didn’t deter her. Mycroft Holmes had made it clear that his brother was entitled to full and complete access to Bart’s facilities, and Molly was only happy to comply.

“What do you need?” she asked, ignoring the flash of déjà vu, a image of this same lab, although darkened. She was leaving for the day. And Sherlock was there, but not as composed as she was used to seeing him. He was raw, emotional, he needed her, and she was always willing.

Molly swallowed, the image wasn’t a memory, wasn’t a dream, and wasn’t worth dwelling on.

If Sherlock noticed the turmoil of false memories flashing through her mind, he showed no sign of it, instead getting right down to business.

“I need a fresh corpse – and a riding crop, although I’ve already got one of those,” he gestured to the crop which lay abandoned on the floor after he rushed to her side.

“I suppose you want to test to see what bruises form?” she said as she headed to the lowest freezer-draw on the furthest side of the room.

“Yes.” Sherlock drew a deep breath, as if trying to remain calm, though Molly could see no reason for him to feel that way. “Have you ever seen a test like this done before?”

Molly closed her eyes, an image flashed before her of Sherlock whipping a corpse over and over and she standing behind a glass partition, watching. The ether that knocked her out must have amplified her visual imagination, she reasoned, because she’d never had this vivid a mind’s eye prior to just a few days ago.

“Have you performed this test before?” she asked, unsure of why.

“I have. Do you remember?” he was by her side, expectant, although of what Molly couldn’t tell.

“Of course not! We only met a few days ago.”

Sherlock looked like a man whose hopes had been dashed, but what had he hoped for beyond access to a body and the lab?

The corpse of Mr Jonas was rolled out and Sherlock began his test. Molly stood behind the glass and watched him, just as she had done in the image in her mind. But in her mind, she was nervous, scared in his presence, and anxious, like she was about to do something very daring.

In reality, she was just watching a slightly eccentric man flagellate a corpse. No need for nerves or anxiety.

“I suppose you’d like me to text you with the photos in 20 minutes or so?” Molly offered when he was done. “I’ll need your number, of course.”

Sherlock’s eyes lit up, like he’d had an idea. “I think you’ll find it’s already in your phone.”

Molly unlocked the screen and searched the contacts list. He was right, his number was there, although she had no memory of ever entering it or calling him.

“But how?” she asked.

Sherlock shrugged. “Probably my brother. You should see what he’s able to do with an email address that’s missing two-factor authentication.”

“I could imagine.”

“You don’t need to – do you remember Anthony Weiner, the congressman in the US?”

“No way!” Molly was aghast.

Sherlock nodded while he said, “I can neither confirm nor deny it.”

The two laughed, a comfortable, companionable laughter. It was hard for Molly to believe that they were only new acquaintances. It felt like she’d known him for years.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Molly asked.

“I was wondering, maybe later, when you’re finished,” he paused, as if struggling to say the words. “Would you like to have coffee?”

“Oh yes! I’m gasping for a drink, grab me a white with one if you can – Beppe’s does the best espresso, if you’re heading out?”

Mildly dejected, Sherlock left.

\---

Scene one had failed to elicit the response Sherlock had wished for. As he waited at Beppe’s for the coffee to brew, Sherlock took the opportunity to use their public wifi and his own VPN to do some light treason.

Mary had shown him her tricks of the trade, especially when it came to cracking Mi5’s security. Within five minutes he was remotely accessing his brother’s servers and in less than 10 he had the file he was looking for. Requisition order _RB150112 – _all details of the mind-wipe technology given to Molly after his fall. He had a thought, and was correct, in assuming that Molly wasn’t the only person who helped Sherlock that day who was deemed worthy of Mycroft’s mind-fuckery. He was right.

But Molly was the only one who was given a choice. Everyone else was forced to be wiped.

Alex Johnson, a doctor at Bart’s who had gotten himself in hot water from over-prescribing opiates was the one who arranged for the stretcher to carry the doppelganger of Sherlock’s body away before passing it off to Molly. He was Elosia patient PE0002

Samantha Bellinger, a banker who had found herself in a lot of debt from failed day-trading, was the first witness on the scene standing by Sherlock’s body. She was Elosia patient PE0003.

Johnny Donaldson, the bike courier-turned-drug-dealer who knocked John over. He was Elosia patient PE0004.

The files showed all had been coerced to complete memory erasure, to have their past crimes struck from the record, and to be transplanted into new lives with new identities.

Finding their files was easy, but tracking down the remaining patient - PE0001 was proving much harder. There was no record in Mycroft’s system. If Sherlock wanted the name, he’d have to look at the physical copies, kept in the filing rooms deep within the basement under the Diogenes Club.

The coffee was ready, Sherlock had to head back.

He knew a trip to his brother’s chamber of secrets was nevertheless on the cards.

\---

That night, in her dream, Molly was stood at a mirror – but not just any mirror, the mirror on the inside of her locker in Bart’s locker room. But the mirror wasn’t acting like a normal mirror. Instead of reflecting a true version of herself, the Molly who looked back at her was different, older, wiser, sadder.

“You need to see,” Mirror-Molly said, prompting Molly to turn her head, only to find herself swap places, now she was the one trapped in the mirror. Outside she watched the other Molly, her other self, play out the scene for her.

The other Molly turned to see Sherlock standing behind her. But this Sherlock was quite unlike the Sherlock that Molly had just met. This Sherlock had a split lip and held himself like he was injured, and the very contact of his shirt on his back was causing him pain. He was younger, thinner, more gaunt, as if he had been living rough.

Molly watched as her other self couldn’t help smiling at his presence, throwing her arms around him in a tight hug.

“You’re back,” she heard herself say, although she had no idea where he had come back from, or how long he had been gone. But the relief she felt was palpable, warming her heart and making her feel as if she could breathe deeply for the first time in over two years.

“Yes,” he said, his lips brushing her hair. And she knew he would have smiled if he wasn’t injured.

The embrace broke.

Pointing at his lip the other Molly asked with more words that weren’t her own, “Was that John?”

“Who else?” he shrugged.

Stuck behind the mirror’s glass, Molly wondered why would John want to punch his friend?

“Give him time. He hasn’t had the same luxury that I’ve had.”

What luxury – she wanted to ask her other self. She wanted to know how this Molly could know more about Sherlock than John, his longtime friend, did?

“Luxury, or burden?” he asked her, afraid of the answer.

“Both. And neither. If you had died, Sherlock, or if I thought you were dead-“ the words stuck in her throat. “But if you’d hurt me like you hurt John, I’d probably slap you senseless myself.”

The locker slammed shut. Molly’s world faded to black.

When the light reappeared, the scene changed. They were still at Bart’s but now in the lab, and it was early morning, not late night. Molly was again stuck behind glass – this time on the other side of the door’s porthole.

The Sherlock she watched was almost unrecognizable from the one she knew. Gone was his impeccably tailored suit, perfectly styled hair, and straight-razor close shave. Replaced instead with three-day growth, matted messy hair and loose fitting trackpants and t-shirt.

His eyes were red, and wide, wild.

If she didn’t know better, she’d have said he was high.

But the Sherlock Holmes she knew, albeit a man she just met, didn’t strike her as a junkie.

Molly watched her other self run a test. She could see that it was a urine test for opiates. If not Sherlock, then who else in the room was the likely candidate? Definitely not a pregnant Mary Watson, or John, although the odd looking bug-eyed man and John and Mary’s young neighbour who were both with them seemed to be other possible suspects.

“Is he clean?” John asked.

Molly watched as her other self took one last look at the test’s results. The result was obvious: heroin use, recent, within the last 4 hours.

“Clean?” she asked, snapping her gloves off.

Sherlock Holmes was remarkable. He was loyal. He was intelligent beyond belief. He had the capacity to send shivers down her spine with just one word in his deep baritone.

But clean, he was not.

She watched herself walk over to him, heart pumping, mind reeling, more angry than she had ever felt in her life.

She slapped him. Once, twice, three times.

The scene paused and from behind the door, Molly looked at her hand. She could feel the sting of his face on her fingers as if she was the one who had struck him.

The scene changed again to another time, another relapse. But the feelings that accompanied the scene were altogether different. This time she wasn’t angry, it was only pity that she felt for him, pity, understanding and a deep abiding compassion.

Somehow she knew it was Sherlock’s birthday and Molly watched her other self as she and Sherlock were walking back to Baker Street from the local cake shop. His cheeks were still gaunt from his brush with death, but having just watched him consume three large slices of cake in one sitting, Molly was beginning to feel relieved. They had turned a corner.

That night, however, his shakes had returned. So too had his temper.

Molly was stood in the corner, a ghost in the room, invisible to Sherlock and her other self.

“Molly!” he called from his room.

Molly looked around. His room? Wasn’t this the spare room? Since when had Sherlock ever slept in here?

“No Sherlock,” Molly heard her other self say calmly as she stood by his door.

“Just a little hit – please?”

He was asking for more methadone, Molly realised.

“No, ” her voice was much stronger than she thought possible.

“It is my birthday,” he tried a smile, but without all his self-control his manipulations were so much more obvious to her. Like a crocodile trying to charm his supper.

Invisible, in the corner, Molly rolled her eyes at his fecklessness.

“Your birthday was over,” the other Molly checked her watch, “fifteen minutes ago.”

“Please Molly. Just a little. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.” He stood then, stalking over to her on unsteady legs.

“No.”

He boxed her in against the wall, one leg deliberately placed between hers, exerting just enough pressure on her sweet spot to communicate his point.

In the other corner of the room, Molly gasped. She could feel it, too.

“Imagine what I could do to you, Molly Hooper.” His voice dropped to a low growl. “I can make you wet with just my voice. Imagine what I could do if you let me touch you.”

Molly watched as her other self steeled against his attack on her virtue. “No matter what you say, I’m not giving you more than the prescribed dose.”

Molly moved to leave before he grabbed her by the arm.

For a moment his face cleared, it was as if Sherlock was himself again.

“Please don’t go. I don’t need the drugs. Just, please don’t leave me.” It was a plea, a supplication.

And it was pity that let her sleep in his bed.

And it was pure self-control that saw her ignoring the feel of his enlarged length pressed up against her in the morning.

\---

In her own bed, Molly woke up with a start. Her dreams were so vivid, so real, it had to have been the aftereffects of the ether she’d accidentally inhaled the other night. What else could explain dreams like that?

Just in case, Molly shot off a message to John.

“You might think this is an odd question, but has Sherlock ever tested positive for drugs?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope my little fic can be a pleasant distraction for you in these uncertain and scary times. Thanks again for my loyal band of commentors. I love your ideas, thoughts and theories. Hope you enjoy this next installment. Stay safe and healthy everyone.

John was supervising a determined Rosie as she fed herself porridge (getting more of it in her hair than in her mouth) when his phone pinged with Molly’s text.

As soon as he read it, John cursed.

“Sherlock, what on God’s earth have you done?” John called out from the kitchen to where Sherlock was lying prone across the lounge – again.

“I’ve done many things John,” he said as he strolled casually into the kitchen. “To which are you referring?”

“I’m referring to this text I just received from Molly,” John’s face was grave has he passed Sherlock the phone.

Sherlock stilled as he read the words: You might think this is an odd question, but has Sherlock ever tested positive for drugs?

A smile broke out across his face. “That’s brilliant!” he said as he passed the phone back to John.

John’s eyes narrowed as he pocketed the phone. “I’m sorry, but I fail to see how it could possibly be brilliant that Molly suspects you of drug use?” He paused, a troubling thought darkening his features. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

Sherlock raised a hand in protest. “Nothing John – I’ve done nothing,” pausing to add, “at least not recently.”

John pulled the face – the “clearly I’m missing something and you’re being a git for not telling me about it,” face.

“Then why Molly’s text?” John asked.

Sherlock grinned like the cat who got the cream. His smug satisfaction drove John crazy. “As ever, John, you see but you don’t perceive - she’s remembering!”

And with that Sherlock turned to stride out of the house.

“But what should I tell Molly?” He yelled after his friend but Sherlock either didn’t hear or chose not to respond.

Once Rosie was finished with breakfast, completely cleaned, and changed, John sat in his armchair while Rosie cheerfully babbled at his feet, stacking the colored wooden blocks that Mrs. H had given her the last time she visited.

Taking a deep breath, John began to compose a reply to Molly.

“Yeah – sorry, should have told you my friend is a sometimes-junkie.”

Too blunt, John thought as he deleted the words.

“Sherlock shows signs of classic self-medicating as a treatment for his numerous psychological issues dating back to his childhood.”

Too clinical, detached. Also deleted.

John tried again.

“He hasn’t used recently. And the last time he used was to catch a serial killer and to help me come back from the abyss after Mary died.”

Too much backstory there. And how could he explain it all without telling Molly the truth? In fact, every way he answered her text lead down a rabbit hole of unanswerable questions based on Molly’s deleted memories.

Instead, he opted with as close as he could come to the truth.

“Molly, it’s a long story, and I probably should share it with you in person.”

He sent the text and waited for her reply. He didn’t have to wait long.

“I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

It seemed that John would have no choice but to tell her all he could – whatever that was.

\---

The Diogenes Club was known for two things: one – it was the place where all the most powerful men in the country frequently gathered and two – it had a strictly unbreakable code of complete silence.

It was the latter that Sherlock deliberately ignored as he strode through the doors singing at the top of his lungs.

“Oh what a beautiful morning! Oh what a beautiful day!”

The porter rushed up to him, his eyes round like saucers, his face positively apoplectic.

Sherlock continued singing, unperturbed. “I’ve got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my w-”

The strong hands of two burly security guards cut short his refrain. They dragged him through the tea room, down the stairs, and into Mycroft’s basement office. Sherlock’s feet barely touched the ground.

“To what do I owe your amateur theatrics, little brother?” Mycroft said, nodding to his goons to let Sherlock go.

Sherlock straightened his suit jacket, bunched as it was from the guards’ rough-handling of him.

“It’s a very good morning brother, don’t you think?” Sherlock paced the room, his spirits high, energy coursing through him.

“Sherlock-“ Mycroft’s stern tone was matched by an equally impassive face.

Sherlock continued. “The sun is shining, birds are singing-“

“I don’t care,” Mycroft replied, pretending instead to busy himself with the paperwork on his desk.

Sherlock placed a hand over the papers. Mycroft’s eyes shot up to his.  
“Molly is remembering.”

“Impossible,” Mycroft dismissed him with his words, but the care that he took to place the papers back in proper order on his desk told a different story.

Sherlock decided to get right down to it, pulling out a chair and sitting across the table from his brother. An inquisition between siblings. “How confident are you in the effectiveness of Elosia?”

Mycroft wasn’t fazed. “Enough to use it for the Lazarus project, but I’m sure you’re already aware of that. It seems Mrs Watson passed on some of her tricks of the trade before her untimely passing.”

“Indeed she did.” Silence passed between them. A tribute.

“Do you think it’s possible that given the right stimulus an Elosia patient might recover their memories?” Sherlock’s eyes bore into his brother, seeking any sign, any information Mycroft wouldn’t – or couldn’t share.

“There is no data on memory recovery from any of the other patients treated when you faked your death.”

Truth.

Undeterred by his brother’s confidence, Sherlock continued. “But there was another patient treated wasn’t there? You had to know it worked before you used it for my fall.”

“Yes.”

Also true.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “So tell me, who was patient number one?”

A beat. A slight pulse increase. There was something there that troubled his brother. “Patient number one is none of your concern. His name has been wiped from all records of the project.”

“But not from your memory,” Sherlock added.

“I can’t tell you.” It was true. A fact that made Mycroft’s mouth twitch in the slightest indication of a frown. There was sorrow there, not quite hidden behind his older brother’s practiced mask of cool detachment.

“Why not?” Sherlock said with the tone of a little brother whose older brother wouldn’t share the fun toy.

What was once hidden sorry now played perforce across his face. “Because, brother mine, some secrets are best left buried.”

Sherlock couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He stood, his hands balling into fists. “Even after all we’ve just been through – Eurus? Victor?”

“Especially after that.”

Seeing that his brother was an immovable object, Sherlock decided to turn the attentions of his unstoppable force elsewhere.

He departed Diogenes in search of the only man who could help him.

Agent Blevins.

\---

While tracking down Blevins was the next item on his to-do list when it came to understanding whatever had been done to Molly, and whatever chances he had to get her back, Sherlock had other more pressing things to attend to.

In this instance it was time for scene two – reenacting the time he complemented her hair and they ate their first meal together in Bart’s cafeteria.

It was lunchtime. He knew he’d find her there, making do with the best that Bart’s caf had to offer – which wasn’t very much. He spotted her the moment he entered the room, sat by the window, alone.

“Which is it, the pork or the pasta?” he asked before she even looked up.

“Oh, it’s you!” she exclaimed. But there was no warmth in her eyes, no happiness to see him.

Undeterred by her mood, he sat to join her.

“Your hair,” he began his complement, “Have you-“

“Sherlock,” she cut him off, her tone ominous. She was in no mood to be complemented.

“I spoke to John this morning.”

Shit – was all Sherlock could think.

“Fuck,” is what he said.

\---

Images from her strange dream replayed in her mind as Molly was in the cab on the way to John’s house earlier that morning. The scent of Sherlock’s cologne and the feel of his Belstaff coat against her hands as she hugged him in the Bart’s locker room. The way her heart leapt in her throat at the sight of him – returned and alive, but from where and for how long? The sting of his unshaven cheek against her palm as she slapped him – three times. The way her breath shallowed and her pulse raised as he, desperate for a fix, propositioned her in his bedroom at Baker street.

Impossible memories, all of them. But then, each of them felt so real, like she was experiencing them firsthand. Almost as if she and Sherlock had shared a prior life together.

Dr Hooper, the scientist, rejected such fantastical notions. Molly, however, wasn’t so sure.

The cab pulled up at John’s – only he could help her make sense of it all.

When Molly arrived, Rosie was happily sat by the telly enjoying an episode of Peppa Pig. John ushered Molly into the kitchen and offered her a cup of tea. Molly wrapped her hands around the mug, trying to borrow some strength from its warmth.

“So, your text-“ John began.

“You must think it’s such a strange thing to ask.” She thought of explaining her dream, she considered describing how odd she felt around John’s friend, but words failed her.

John seemed to understand nevertheless. “You’d be surprised what counts as strange when it comes to Sherlock Holmes.”

Molly nodded, she was beginning to see that there were many more mysteries that hid behind Sherlock’s blue-grey gaze and piercing features.

“So tell me,” Molly asked, reaching out to John.

“I’ll do my best,” John took a deep breath, steeling himself for what was to come.

The story John shared broke Molly’s heart. His words painted the portrait of a young boy who faced unimaginable trauma when his best friend not only went missing, but, as it turns out, had been abducted by Sherlock’s own disturbed sister. Worse than that, his sister taunted and tormented him with a puzzle to solve to set his friend free, but it was too hard for the young boy.

Sherlock never found his friend. Well, not until much, much later.

The ghost of Victor Trevor haunted Sherlock from that day, the specter of his lost friend loomed at the heart of every mystery he solved from the ages of nine to thirty-nine. And worst of all, Sherlock had no idea. Like a person whose memories had been tampered with, Sherlock had pasted over Victor with the image of a dog, a beloved family pet; a loss still upsetting but much less traumatic than the abduction and murder of his best friend.

Although leaving Sherlock able to function, the repressed trauma was not without its affect. As a teen, Sherlock cycled between what could only be described as bouts of mania with deep debilitating depression. His parents, themselves in shock from the disappearance of Victor, followed by what they believed to be the death of their daughter in the fire which destroyed their ancestral family home, didn’t have the capacity to do anything other than deny anything was wrong with their son. And in relative terms, they were right. He definitely wasn’t a psychopathic child-murderer and arsonist; anything more than that was gravy.

Mycroft knew better. He made note of each step his brother took on the descentinto self-medication. In highschool it was Ritalin when he was feeling low, valium to bring him back down when things were too manic – all scored from his classmates. By his late teens, Sherlock had moved on to harder narcotics – cocaine and morphine, having honed his pick-pocketing skills to steal them from the local drug dealers. By uni, things had gotten worse and what was once medicinal had soon become recreational – with Sherlock soon circling the drain of complete heroin dependency.

Sherlock had his first stint in rehab in the summer break of his last year at uni.

It was in rehab that Sherlock found an even greater addiction – puzzles. Even though Sherlock had, from all appearances, deleted the name of Victor Trevor from his memory, it seemed that on one level it remained. Sherlock had seen a story in the paper about a man in Norfolk also named Victor Trevor who had passed away. Compelled only by instinct that told him there was a case that needed solving, and a half-remembered instinct that Victor Trevor was important to him, Sherlock skipped class to attend the funeral.

At the funeral Sherlock noticed two things – one, that the watch placed on the dead man’s casket bore the initials J.A. and that there was a man lingering at the back of the church whom most people would have overlooked. He was dressed like all the other mourners with one noticeable difference – his shoes were worn, falling apart.

The man was Jack Hudson. He was a brute, a violent man, a blackmailer, and the much-older husband of one Martha Hudson.

Sherlock solved the mystery, ensured Hudson would be tried for crimes both in the UK and the US, and as a bonus, the young man soon became lifelong friends with the thankful widow.

For a time, Mycroft thought that Sherlock had found his path – puzzles and chemistry, but the dependency wasn’t easily abandoned. Another stay in rehab was soon needed.

Mycroft arranged Sherlock’s final release on two conditions – one, that he achieve high distinctions in all his subjects in the coming year and two, that he be taken under the wing of Greg Lestrade to consult on cases with the Met.

Molly was speechless, and could feel the familiar sting of tears in her eyes.

“It’s so hard to believe.”

“I know,” John agreed, “I didn’t believe it myself when I first met him. I laughed when Lestrade suggested Sherlock might have a habit.”

“But he’s clean now, right?”

John’s silence spoke volumes.

“John?”

“Is he clean now?”

“I’m confident that he would pass a piss test, if you’re asking. But it you tested his hair, that would tell another story.”

Molly knew the facts. Urine tests could detect drug use between one to three days. Hair tests could trace usage back as far as three months. Only months ago, Sherlock was using.

Molly left John, burdened by the weight of all that John had revealed and her grief for this man whom she barely knew but felt so inextricably drawn to.

It was thoughts of Sherlock that filled her mind as she prepped her tests that morning, almost as if she could see the faint outline of him working beside her in the lab. She bent over her microscope, only to swear she saw him do the same at the other microscope across the bench. She opened the storage cabinet, only to feel the shadow of his presence behind her as she did so. She smiled when a test confirmed her hypothesis, turning to share the result with him as if it was second nature – but she’d never done that before.

So haunted had she felt by his presence that when he joined her at lunch, it took her a moment to realise it was actually really him, not just the image of him from imagination.

As he sat down across from her and began saying something about her hair, Molly realised that she owed it to him to tell him what John had shared with her that morning.

“Fuck,” he cursed not in anger, but in regret. He hadn’t wanted her to know.

Molly reached across the table, placing a hand gently on his. “It’s ok. I understand.”

“You do?” his eyes warmed. He was surprised.

“Mary’s death was hard on all of us, it’s only natural it would trigger a relapse in someone with your history.”

Her hand remained in his.

Sherlock shook his head slowly. “There’s more to it than that. There’s more I need to explain – could I meet you later, dinner maybe, and tell you the whole story?”

Molly pulled her hand away slowly, immediately missing the contact. “I don’t know if I should.”

“Please?” he asked, his eyes so wide, so searching, so desperate.

She should have said no, she should have kept their interactions entirely professional, but there was something about his offer of dinner, like she had rejected him once and regretted it – although this was the first time he’d made such an offer.

“Sure. Let’s have dinner,” she agreed.

What was the worst that could happen?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to MrsMCrieff, because of the joy her updates have been bringing me at a time like this. I can only hope my readers have a fraction of the enjoyment from my fics that she has given me!

Sherlock left Molly at Bart’s to finish her shift, with a promise to meet her again later that evening at Angelo’s Restaurant. That gave Sherlock five hours to track down Agent Blevins. He knew it wouldn’t take long to find the agent, but was surprised to discover just how easy it was. As operatives went, Blevins didn’t seem particularly adept at covering his tracks.

It only took Sherlock one hour after hacking into London’s “eye in the sky” - Mycroft’s network of surveillance cameras - to trace Blevins’ departure from Molly’s flat the night he administered the Elosia-effectiveness test.

Unlike Sherlock, who was acutely aware of the presence of every camera at all times, avoiding them unless he deliberately wanted his brother to know where he was, Blevins seemed to have no idea of their presence – almost as if he lived in a world before surveillance avoidance became an essential skill for any covert operative.

Sherlock traced Blevins’ journey from Molly’s flat on Montague street into a cab which took him down to Kensington where he disappeared behind one in a long row of identical doors in front of identical houses.

It was outside this flat that Sherlock now stood, watching and waiting, smoking a handful of cigarettes to pass the time.

There really wasn’t much of note in Blevins’ daily routine. When Sherlock arrived in the early afternoon, Blevins was sat by the window in his front room, listening to music which played on a vintage Long-Play record. Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, Sherlock surmised with very little effort. At 3pm, Blevins left his house and took a walk down to the corner shop where he purchased three red tomatoes, a head of iceberg lettuce and one continental cucumber. At the butcher, he purchased one ultrathin steak. On the way back home, he picked up the afternoon edition of the Daily Mail, before stopping for a quick chat with his next-door neighbor on his way back inside. As he stepped through the door, the phone in Blevins’ pocket rang and he answered it – an old-style flip phone.

The man may have been on the cutting edge of memory science, but was certainly behind the times in other areas – newspapers, flip phones, LP records; it was like he was living in the past.

All of this would be information that Sherlock would have deleted, if not for one intriguing detail: every single person that Blevins interacted with that afternoon was an Mi5 operative. The tall, balding convenience store owner – a former forensic accountant. The musclebound butcher – former wetworks (fitting, Sherlock thought with a smirk). The young lady at the newsagent – used to write fake news for American cable networks back before the Russians took over that racket. And the portly, grandmotherly neighbor – used to bake Mycroft’s favourite cakes at the Diogenes club before Sherlock’s brother swore off carbs and sugar for life.

Curiouser and curiouser.

But the answers would have to wait. Sherlock was running out of time, and he had a dinner date to make. The investigation would have to continue tomorrow.

* * *

Molly went home after work to shower and change before meeting Sherlock. As she searched through her wardrobe for what to wear, it dawned on her that she had no idea what kind of dinner it was that she’d agreed to.

She could wear what she usually wore to work, but they weren’t really colleagues – they’d only crossed paths in Bart’s lab a handful of times.

She could dress casual, like she did whenever she met friends for a drink at the pub – but they weren’t friends – not yet, at least, although having so many friends in common it astounded Molly that she wasn’t aware of him earlier.

She could put on her go-to first date dress, but they certainly weren’t dating – and despite the attention that Sherlock had given her, he certainly hadn’t expressed a romantic intention towards her. Nor was Molly sure if she was interested in such a connection with him, penetrating eyes and gorgeous cheekbones notwithstanding.

Molly closed her eyes for a minute, trying to picture what it would be like to kiss him, to run her hands through his hair, but all she could conjure was the clinical touch of a doctor as she examined his torso, tracing scars on his back and placing a stethoscope against the porcelain skin of his chest to hear a worryingly-rapid heartbeat. Hardly the stuff of Mills and Boon.

Back in reality, Molly decided to settle for wearing her rainbow-striped jumper and tan pants. It was a safe, neutral choice – not too much like work, not too casual for dinner, and not sending any signal that she thought they were on a date.

Which was why she was so surprised by the way Sherlock reacted when she arrived.

She could see him before she entered, sat at the front bay window, the best seat in the house. He stood as she approached him, his face turning even more pale than his usual alabaster.

“Sherlock, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!” she said, trying to mask her discomfort with laughter.

Sherlock blinked a few times before finally focusing on her. “Sorry, it’s just, your top-“

Molly looked down at the stripes on her jumper, “Is there something on it?,” she asked as she brushed a hand down her front self-consciously.

“No, sorry,” Sherlock shook his head to dismiss the thought, “please have a seat – the owner has promised us his best tonight.”

Taking in the table, the dimly-lit restaurant and the candle, Molly started to wonder if they actually were on a date.

“Do you come here often?” she asked as he poured her a glass of red wine.

“No,” he said, taking a sip of his own, “but Angelo owes me.”

“Did you help him put up some shelves?” she smiled.

“Nope,” he said, popping the p before smirking smugly. “I got him off a murder charge.”

She smiled back. She loved how comfortable she was in his presence, like they were old friends.

A moment passed in companionable silence before Molly spoke. “I’m sorry about today. I mean, it really wasn’t my place to ask John about your history.”

“I’m an open book, Molly, I’ve got nothing to hide, especially from you.” His eyes bore into hers, the tone of his voice so deep it sent shivers down her spine. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn Sherlock Holmes was flirting with her.

Molly took another drink.

“I don’t even know how to explain it,” she continued, “It’s just, I had this vivid dream, it was like I could see you, and you were in so much pain.” Molly’s eyes started welling up.

Sherlock reached across the table, his large hand enveloping hers. “I was.”

“Tell me,” she said, almost a whisper. 

Sherlock removed his hand from hers, taking a drink as if to steel himself.

“What do you know about Mary’s death?” he asked. His eyes searched her face, as if reading her every expression like the words on a page.

Molly racked her brain, another blank – just like all of the gaps she’d noticed in her memory in the last week.

“I know she was shot,” Molly began slowly, deliberately, as if pulling a thread that was caught on a snag, “but I can’t remember where, or how.” A dark chasm opened in her mind, Molly stood on the edge peering down into the depths, but it ran too deep, too dark.

Sherlock nodded. Taking a deep breath, he began. “Mary was helping me on a case, John was there too, with Mycroft and Lestrade. We had the suspect – Vivian Norbury - cornered at the London Aquarium. It was over, until Norbury pulled a gun on me.”

Chills descended down Molly’s spine at the thought of Sherlock’s life being in peril. “Why?” she asked.

“I-“ he stopped. There was a hesitancy in Sherlock’s voice, something he found hard to say. “I got cocky.” His eyes couldn’t meet hers, they were downcast, penitent. After a moment, they focused on a space outside of space, like he was back in the Aquarium, watching the scene play out.

“I humiliated her. I baited her, backed her into a corner and she wanted to shut me up. She shot at me but-”

Sherlock couldn’t continue. So Molly did it for him. “But Mary saved you.”

Molly watched as Sherlock’s hands began to tremble from the adrenaline coursing through his system. He was no longer in the restaurant with Molly, he was there, by Mary’s side, watching her die, again.

How many times had he watched his friend die, Molly wondered.

“By saving my life she conferred a value on it,” he said, robotically, his voice detached from the pain that so clearly plagued the rest of his body.

Molly nodded. “It’s a currency you can’t repay.”

Sherlock came back to her, eyes meeting hers. “Exactly,” he said, relieved to know she understood him.

“But if Mary saved your life, why did you try to kill yourself?” Molly asked. It was a puzzle, but the pieces didn’t quite fit yet.

“Mary told me to,” he waved a hand in dismissal, like he was explaining the most obvious fact in the world.

Molly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “How?” she asked.

“After she died, I received a package.” His finger absently traced circles around the rim of his wineglass. “It was a video, a message that she’d arranged to be sent on the occasion of her death. In it, Mary told me to save John, to go to hell if I had to – so I did.”

Molly’s eyes brimmed with tears, if she was fascinated by the detective’s brain before, she was now completely taken by the size of his heart, the depth of his love for his friends.

A tear fell, running down her cheek, Sherlock reached across the table to wipe it away. Molly’s skin tingled at the contact.

“I didn’t die, obviously,” he said, an attempt at a joke, a desire to make her tears disappear.

Molly placed a hand on top of his, her cheek melting into his palm.

“I’m glad,” she smiled through tears, “otherwise we wouldn’t have met.”

Sherlock removed his hand. A ghost of a thought crossed his face, but Molly couldn’t place it. Guilt? Regret?

The weight of all that he’d revealed hung heavy between them.

“Is there anything else you’d like to ask me, Molly?” he asked, taking another drink.

“How did you convince John you were dying? I mean, he wouldn’t have just taken your word for it.”

Sherlock nodded, gravely. “There was someone I needed, someone I relied on more than anything, who I’m sorry to say I took for granted. They helped me.”

His eyes bore into Molly, if she didn’t know better, she would have sworn he was talking about her.

“Have you told them?” Molly asked.

“I’m trying to. It’s –“ Sherlock stopped, as if catching himself saying something he shouldn’t. He changed track. “They’ve gone away, but I hope they come back soon.”

There was a wistfulness in his voice, a grief akin to his loss of Mary, but different. A lost love, perhaps? Molly had learned so much about this remarkable man in the last 24-hours, but still knew very little – especially about his love life. He was single, she knew that, but had he ever been married, or involved with someone? Why did she have a feeling that he was once engaged, but not for long and perhaps not for real.

Before she chased that white rabbit of a thought into wonderland, Sherlock poured her another glass.

“Enough about my past, Molly, I’m here now, with you.”

Molly took a sip. “And you’re clean now?”

He looked chastened, guilty. “I’m clean but I'm not cured. You don't get cured. I haven't used in two months, which isn't to say I won't tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Molly almost choked on her drink, the wine burning a path down her throat.

Sherlock shook his head. “Well, probably not tomorrow. But I’ve relapsed enough times to know I can’t make any promises.”

Sherlock’s eyes searched hers, peering into them as if he could read her very thoughts, before adding, “If you’re looking for a happy ending Molly, I’m not your man.”

Molly was going to ask if he really could be her man, if he wanted to be, and what would happen if he were. The words were about to form on her lips as the bearded, portly form of Angelo appeared at their table.

“It’s so nice to see Sherlock on another date!” He exclaimed, his voice booming and bringing Molly back to reality.

“It’s not-“ Molly began, only to be cut off by Angelo.

“I mean, the last one was a keeper, eh mate?” Angelo smirked.

“He’s talking about John,” Sherlock said to Molly conspiratorially.

“Oh,” Molly smiled, knowing their friend well enough that she was certain that he was as straight as an arrow.

Angelo set the plates before them, “I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it,” he winked.

Sherlock appraised the food but Molly had other things on her mind.

“Sherlock, what is this?” she asked.

“I believe it’s Tagliolini with Taleggio and Black Truffle,” he said, his fork probing through the pasta.

Molly continued, undeterred. “I mean, what is this, between us?”

Sherlock’s fork lay forgotten, his whole attention focused instead on her. “You tell me, Molly, what am I to you?”

How could she put into words how she felt for this remarkable, strange, wonderful man? How could she explain how it made no sense that they’d just met?

“I’ve known you for less than a week, but I can’t stop thinking about you,” her cheeks flushed at the admission. “I know it’s weird, but I can’t help feeling like we know each other more than two new friends should.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, his voice dropped to his deepest register. “Is that what we are, Molly? Friends?”

“I don’t know.” She said, and she meant it. There weren’t any words to explain how she felt about this man.

“Is that ok, not knowing?”

“Yes.” She said, surprised, but relieved. It was ok. “Is that ok with you?” she checked.

“Yes, for once I’m happy not to know the answer to a puzzle.”

Their conversation over dinner was much less emotionally charged. Sherlock asked Molly about the latest autopsies she’d completed, asking her occasional follow-up questions to better understand her findings. She’d never been on a date (not-date, she reminded herself) where the man with her hadn’t been at least off-put and sometimes even squeamish about her line of work, but Sherlock hung on her every word.

After dinner, he escorted her home, asking the cab-driver to wait as he walked her to the front door, making it clear he didn’t have any intentions other than a consummate gentleman would.

As she reached the door and said goodbye, Sherlock leaned in, placing a kiss on her cheek near the corner of her mouth, not entirely chaste, more than just friends.

As she walked into her building Molly had the sure and certain memory that he had done that before – but when?

* * *

Sherlock silo-ed off all his feelings from the night before, locking them away in the light of morning so as to focus on the case at hand. He tried his best not to think of the way her deep brown eyes swam with tears for him, or the hope that rested sharply in his heart whenever she admitted that their connection made no sense to her. And he certainly couldn’t think about the soft feeling of her cheek as he kissed her, or how much restraint it took for him not to kiss her again, firmly on her mouth, removing any doubt about his feelings for her.

The next day, Sherlock stood outside Blevins’ house again. At 3pm, he watched as the agent followed the exact same routine as the day before, with to-the-minute accuracy. Strangely, so did all the agents he interacted with. The greengrocer, butcher, and neighbor. Even the headline on the paper was identical - “Brown PM” – although Sherlock had no idea what a Brown PM was.

Sherlock was about to follow Blevins into the house when a familiar voice filled his ears. “I told you some secrets are best left buried, brother,” Mycroft placed an identical newspaper into Sherlock’s hands.

Sherlock read the date - 27th June 2007.

“What have you done to him?” Sherlock asked, afraid of the answer.

“He did it to himself,” Mycroft remained as ever cool and detached.

“Patient 1” Sherlock said. Mycroft nodded in confirmation.

Sherlock shoved the newspaper back against his brother’s chest. “I find it hard to believe that when you recruited him from East Germany, you added a clause to the contract stating that he would be living in 2007 for the rest of his life.”

“2007 was a good year. Gordon Brown has just become PM,” Mycroft folded the newspaper, placing it back into his briefcase before dusting off his suit, his armour.

Sherlock was desperate for a smoke. “I thought you hated the Labor party,” he said after his first drag.

“Precisely,” Mycroft smiled without mirth.

“Why?” Sherlock was almost too afraid to ask.

“Because Blair was nothing other than a spineless US-loving toadie.” Mycroft was deliberately being obtuse.

“I mean why Blevins, what did he do to deserve this?” Sherlock craned his neck, trying to get a look inside the agent’s windows.

“In 2007, there was a small website that was just starting to grow traction in intelligence circles, a place for whistleblowers to share the incriminating secrets that people in my line of business do not want shared.”

“Wikileaks.”

Mycroft nodded.

“Blevins read a report about the first test of Elosia and the patient who received the prototype treatment. It seemed, at least from the report, that the treatment may have resulted in some unintended side effects.”

“Like what?” Sherlock’s heartrate skyrocketed – if there were side effects and Molly had been exposed, he didn’t know what he would do.

Mycroft waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing really. Impulse control, mostly, but occasional delusions of grandeur.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad,” In fact, it sounded a lot like him, Sherlock thought as he stubbed out his cigarette.

“I didn’t think so either, in fact, I’d taken a personal interest in the case, was doing all I could to keep the patient under control – but that wasn’t enough for Blevins. He had a tranche of documents, ready to go. He was planning to meet with Assange himself at 4pm on June 27, 2007 – until we intervened, that is.”

“The Wagner.”

Mycroft nodded. “Every time he plays it, his memory re-sets.”

“And now he lives that day over again.” Sherlock wanted to vomit, disgusted at the lengths his brother had gone to, the levels of pure maleficence. “What is it, Sisyphus or Prometheus?”

“You know I can’t resist a dash of the poetic, brother.”

“Indeed, ”Sherlock said as he walked away. His hands balled into fists that he wished he could embed in his brother’s face.

“Where are you going?” Mycroft called after him.

“To steal some fire,” Sherlock called over his shoulder.

Sherlock crossed the road and knocked on Blevins’ door. The older man’s eyes lit up in recognition when he saw Sherlock.

“Do you know who I am?” Sherlock asked.

“Of course I do, the family resemblance, it’s astounding.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, always uncomfortable with any connection to Mycroft. But what Blevins said next was entirely unexpected.

“You’re Rudy’s nephew.”

Uncle Rudy – Mycroft’s mentor, the same man who was responsible for setting up Sherrinford and hiding Eurus’ existence from their family for the last 30 years.

“But of course, we’ve met before,” Blevins added.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “No, we haven’t.”

Blevins continued undeterred. “Yes, we have, although I’m certain you would have no memory of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So - what do you think? What do you think will happen next? Thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You wonderful, wonderful readers! I'm so thankful for each and every one of you - especially for those of you who have taken the time to comment. I'm glad you enjoyed the twists and turns of the last chapter.
> 
> I know you're all dying to see what happens when Sherlock and Blevins meet - but I thought I would post two shorter chapters sooner rather than make you wait for one long chapter. That means, no big revelations from Blevins in this chapter, but instead an interlude form Molly on the night of her date (not-date?) with Sherlock.
> 
> If y'all ask nicely, I might even post one more chapter this weekend as an Easter special gift - but y'all gotta ask nicely, ok! :-)
> 
> Thanks again to you all

Molly’s sleep was fitful the whole night after she returned home from her dinner with Sherlock. She couldn’t stop thinking about how and why it felt so familiar to have him kiss her on the cheek.

In her dreams she had visions so powerful that it felt as if she were there.

~~~

It’s Christmas Eve. They’re all at John’s flat at Baker Street – although for some reason Molly is certain that Sherlock lives there too. Details in the decor incompatible with the doctor she knows fly in front of her vision: bullet holes in the drywall, a spray-paint smiley face on the wallpaper, a Cluedo board stuck on the wall with a dagger right through the conservatory. John would never do that – but Sherlock certainly would.

Everyone is there for Christmas drinks – John, Mrs Hudson, Greg and Sherlock. All eyes are on the detective, strutting around the sitting room like he owns the place.

And Molly arrives, dressed up for the occasion, but in a dress that’s one size too tight, earrings that are way too big, hair that she’s tried just that little bit too hard with, and make-up that doesn’t quite suit her shade of skin.

Another figure comes into Molly’s vision. She sees herself, but entirely unlike herself at the same time. This version of Molly has none of her self-consciousness, awkwardness, or warmth.

This Molly has hair which is slicked back and controlled into a severe and tight bun. She is wearing a black pencil-skirt, matching scoop-neck black blouse, and three-inch stilettos; clothes unlike anything Molly herself would ever wear. Her lipstick is the same bright red that Molly has chosen to wear that night, but unlike how awkwardly juxtaposed the shade is with Molly’s usual appearance, on this, more confident version of herself, it suits her perfectly.

This Molly, unseen by the others, only addresses herself. Everyone else is frozen in place: John, Lestrade, Mrs H, even Sherlock is frozen, unmoving, in a peculiar Christmas tableau.

“Do you know why he’s about to kiss your cheek?” the other Molly asks herself.

“No.” Molly has no idea, no memory of the moments that have preceded it. But one thing Molly does know for certain is that Sherlock is about to place his warm lips against her reddening cheek. It’s a penance. He’s genuinely sorry for something.

“Of course he’s sorry,” the other Molly tells herself, as if she’s read her own mind. But of course she has. She is her. “He’s just humiliated you in front of all of your friends.”

The other Molly is angry, and she has a right to be.

Molly looks at the red wrapping of her gift for Sherlock. She knows instinctively that inside is a bee preserved in amber, but she has no memory of ever purchasing it. Sherlock has made some deductions about it, about her, and her feelings for him. She feels raw, revealed and naked in front of all of their friends. Her emotions were his plaything.

“He’s not a nice man.” Her other self says as she studies Sherlock’s still, unmoving face. “Do you want to see what he does next?” She asks herself.

In an instant they’re taken away from Baker Street and standing in the morgue at Bart’s. It’s Christmas day. Molly looks down at herself to see that she’s clad in a cheery Christmas knit-jumper. Her hair is loose, unbound and flowing - entirely unlike how she’d usually wear it to work. But she isn’t meant to be at work today; Mycroft Holmes has called her in. Sherlock needs to identify a body.

Molly’s other self is there too. Still clad in black, red lips still glistening, eyes still cold and calculating.

“You’ve thought all this time Sherlock was married to his work, but did you know he’s been fucking this dominatrix?” The eyes of both versions of Molly are drawn to the naked, faceless woman on the slab, then up to Sherlock’s face as he looks at the woman’s body with intense familiarity.

Molly doesn’t want to think about him fucking this woman. Doesn’t want to imagine him completely undone as he takes his pleasure from her, and she from him. Doesn’t want to hear the sound of his name on this woman’s lips as he makes her come.

But she can’t stop the images playing in her mind.

“That’s right,” Molly says to her other self. “It’s not that he’s not interested in sex – he’s just not interested in sex with you.” Her words are barbs, her tone is venom.

Molly pulls the sleeve of her Christmas jumper over her hand, dabbing the corner of her eyes with it as red-hot tears draw lines down her cheeks.

There is no comfort from Molly’s other self.

“And here he is,” the other Molly says, rounding on Sherlock, “rubbing your nose in it, on Christmas of all days.” Her voice is dark. She is disgusted. She looks at Sherlock with such hatred, her voice full of bile.

“And he’s just getting started,” the other Molly adds.

Another minute passes and they’re stood in a darkened Bart’s laboratory. Molly feels the bone-tired ache that often accompanies the end of a long shift.

Her body is alive with the sharp intake of fear and shot of adrenaline when he surprises her with his presence, lurking as he is in the dark.

“Do you know why he’s come to you?” The other Molly rounds on the detective, invisible to his all-seeing eyes. “He’s about to tell you some beautiful lies. He’s about to say that you count, that he’s always trusted you.” Her tone is dripping with sarcasm. She clearly doesn’t believe his words.

The scene plays out. The words sound so familiar to Molly as they escape his lips. Her heart quickens as he says he needs her. Sherlock walks closer and closer, backing her up against the door of the lab. If she didn’t know better she’d swear he was about to kiss her again – but he doesn’t. The scene stops. Sherlock is frozen in time.

“He doesn’t care about you, not really. He’s only thinking about himself – his survival. He hasn’t given a thought to what risk he’s opening you up to.” She taps his cheek with bright-red nails before drawing one nail sharply down his flesh. But she doesn’t leave a mark.

“He’s selfish.” The other Molly slaps Sherlock’s face. He doesn’t react. He can’t.

Two years pass in an instant. Molly can feel she’s gotten older, but also more calloused, weighed down by the burden of the lie she’s been carrying for him, although Molly can’t recall just what that lie is.

But there’s relief now, too. He’s back – but from where she can’t say, can’t recall.

They’re in the stairwell of an apartment complex – not hers. Sherlock gazes into her eyes with such intensity. Her breath quickens, imperceptible to anyone but him. And he kisses her again - softly, gently, on the cheek.

He pulls back, and freezes in place.

“Do you know why he just kissed you?” Molly’s other self, standing, watching the scene from on the stairs above them, asks.

“No.” Molly has no idea why they are together, or where they have been all day. She also can’t explain why the day feels so illicit, so wrong. Like she’s cheating on Tom just by being in Sherlock’s very presence.

“He doesn’t want to share.” The other Molly gestures to the ring on Molly’s finger, which Molly plays with idly. “He’s a child who doesn’t want to play with the toy unless someone else has it, but when it’s his turn, he suddenly loses all interest.”

If Molly feels like a day spent solving crimes with Sherlock is like cheating, Molly has no way of processing what happens next. She is in bed with Sherlock, her bed. Although from all indications the night before was a platonic evening – she certainly can’t feel the dull ache that usually accompanies a morning after a night of passionate sex.

“This doesn’t look like a loss of interest,” Molly says to her other self who is stood by the doorway, looking thoroughly indifferent to the scene before her.

The Molly in the bed would love nothing more than to wipe the arrogant and unimpressed smile off her own face.

“Do you know why he’s sleeping in your bed?” She gestures to the front door of Molly’s apartment. “Two birds, one stone.”

It’s Saturday morning and Tom has decided to surprise her with coffee and croissants. He uses the key she’s given him so she hasn’t heard him, has slept straight through. All this would be fine if not for the scene he’s about to discover – the shirtless man in bed with her, his arm draped protectively over her like she’s his.

She’s not his, she never has been.

“What the fuck is this?” is Tom’s shocked greeting as coffee cups crash to the floor, forgotten.

Molly jumps out of bed, trying to get away from Sherlock like he’s toxic – and for her relationship with Tom, he is.

“Tom, I can explain,” she hears herself say.

Sherlock isn’t helping, stretching, smirking, smugly satisfied, hair tousled, devastatingly handsome. The sheet falls lower as he does so, revealing Sherlock’s hipbone and the fact that the detective is clad only in his jockey shorts.

If Sherlock wants to give the impression that he and Molly have had sex, it seems from Tom’s pale-faced shock that he has achieved it perfectly.

Tom doesn’t want to hear anything Molly has to say as she pulls on her robe, rushing to his side and trying to form a protest.

“There’s nothing you can say Molly, nothing I didn’t already know.”

Tom puts out his hand expectantly. Molly starts taking off her ring.

“He’ll never love you. Sherlock Holmes isn’t capable of it.” Tom says. The other Molly says it too.

The scene evaporates.

Tom is gone, Sherlock is gone, Molly’s flat is gone. Even Molly’s other self has disappeared.

Molly is alone in the dark with only her thoughts – but isn’t that what her other self was the whole time? The other Molly is her – or at least, a part of her. Somewhere, deep inside, there is a hurt, angry and calloused version of herself who has catalogued every injury that Sherlock Holmes has ever inflicted on her.

“He plays with your emotions like a cat with a mouse,” comes a voice, a thought, from the black ether.

“It’s not a game, Sherlock,” Molly can hear herself say.

“I’m not an experiment, Sherlock,” comes her voice again.

“You bastard,” she says with venom. She believes it, too.

“You always say such horrible things, always.”

And then one more voice, one completely unexpected and with words she never thought she’d hear.

“I love you,” came Sherlock’s voice. If she didn’t know any better she would have sworn he meant it.

And as soon as he says it, silence descends – like a telephone call cut off prematurely.

Molly is alone.

~~~

Molly woke, it was 7am, but it may as well have been midnight for all the rest she had achieved. Feeling like she had been hit by a freight train, Molly texted Mike to say she wouldn’t be coming in and rolled over again, hoping to get some more sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You asked and I delivered - one last chapter update for your Easter weekend. I'm back working this week so I don't know when I'll be able to update again.  
I hope you aren't all still emotionally reeling after the chapter with Molly. This chapter also has angst, but also some answers as Sherlock sits down with Blevins. I hope you enjoy.  
If my fics are providing enjoyable distractions for you all in this crazy time we're living in, I'm so happy! Thanks again for each and every one of you for reading and commenting. It means the world to me!

“Let me get you some tea, Will.” The stocky, square jawed, silver-haired agent said as he ushered Sherlock inside, boiling the kettle for a tea that soon sat on the table in front of Sherlock, untouched. What he’d come for was more than a nice cup of tea.

“You said we’d met before,” Sherlock began.

“Yes, Will, we have,” Blevins said as he replaced the milk back in the refrigerator. The door shut slightly too roughly, images of snowcapped mountains shuddered underneath their magnets.

“Why do you keep calling me that? I haven’t gone by Will since-“

Sherlock caught himself. He knew exactly when – after Musgrave Hall burned to the ground and he and his family (sans sister, he now realised), moved to the small red cottage in the Cotswolds that his parents still called home.

He could see now as he interrogated his memories the tight lines around his mother’s mouth as she said his name – Sherlock – and the glisten of unfalling tears in his father’s eyes whenever he’d look at his son.

They’d lost two children in that blaze – Eurus and Will.

“Your Uncle Rudy brought you to me. He was desperate. He’d just carted his niece, your sister, away and now here you were – catatonic, singing a song over and over.”

In a quiet voice, just above a whisper, Sherlock began singing, the song once long-forgotten but now seared into his memory:

“I that am lost, oh who will find me?

Deep down below the old beech tree.”

Blevins smiled ruefully. “Yes. That’s the one. You woke up in the hospital after your sister burned your house down and you wouldn’t stop singing it, over and over.”

Sherlock closed his eyes, he tried to picture the scene, but in his memory there was no song. He could see himself lying in the hospital bed. He was trying to tell them all – the doctors, nurses, his parents – that he was fine. Over and over he protested that he was ready to go home, but he was angry, frustrated at their response. It was as if they couldn’t understand a word he said.

But if Sherlock had become disassociated, if his mind had betrayed him, then it was entirely possible that Blevins was speaking the truth, that this agent’s version of the past was more accurate than his own memories.

“So my uncle just wanted you to delete the song?” It was the only thing that made sense, the only reason even someone as cold and calculating as Uncle Rudy could subject a child to something as invasive and dangerous as Elosia – particularly in the early stages of its development.

“That was his intention, yes. He could see its effect on your mother, his sister. He dearly loved your mother, you know. It was killing him to see your family torn apart. First your sister and now you.” Blevins was talking in the present tense, like the events were occurring now, rather than 30 years ago.

“But you deleted more than just a song, didn’t you?”

Blevins closed his eyes, steeling himself with a deep breath, like he had entered the confession booth. “The memory ran too deep – it had already started to infiltrate your very personality – or, should I say, Will Holmes’ personality.”

Sherlock nodded, beginning to understand. “You couldn’t delete the song without deleting me –“ he caught himself and corrected, “deleting Will.” It had been so long since Sherlock had thought of himself as Will, the name felt strange as it came out of his mouth.

“Yes. What happened to Will was an unfortunate byproduct of the treatment.”

Sherlock shuddered, it wasn’t every day that one heard someone talk about the deletion of one’s childhood persona as an “unfortunate byproduct.”

“And what you rebuilt in Will’s place, let me guess - you based it off the only other Holmes you had easy access to.”

Blevins nodded. “Mycroft.”

Sherlock stood, he needed to scream, he needed to punch something, but the truth was more important – especially if he was to have any chance at bringing Molly back. Instead he paced the two-and-a-half steps across the cramped kitchen, turning, pacing, turning again. Over and over, balling his hands into tight fists he imagined landing on his brother’s jaw.

Blevins continued. “Rudy didn’t warn me about how different the two of you are. Polar opposites, as it turns out. Will warm where Mycroft is cold. Will ruled by his heart, where Mycroft is all brain. Will has friends – Victor Trevor in particular – but Mycroft has only ever had your parents, your sister and you.”

Sherlock looked at his hands, no longer entirely his, he realised.

Who was he? Will? Sherlock? Some hybrid of the two?

“Whose idea was it to change my name?” Sherlock asked.

“Yours.”

Sherlock blinked, unable to follow. Blevins explained. “When you came back to consciousness after the treatment, you no longer answered to Will – in fact, you were quite opposed to it.”

“Show me,” Sherlock demanded. He had to see the evidence for himself.

Sherlock followed Blevins as he headed to his front room, the same room where Sherlock had watched the agent listening to a Wagner LP-record only hours earlier. The same room where – unbeknownst to Blevins himself, he too was an Elosia patient – albeit one being subjected to the treatment on a daily basis.

But that was one little fact Sherlock planned to keep to himself – for now.

Blevins opened a cupboard to reveal an old cathode-ray-tube television with a built in VHS player – more evidence of Blevins being stuck in the past. The agent inserted a tape – Elosia Prototype – PE0000.

Much like the DVD of Molly’s treatment, the (albeit lower-quality recording) was centered on Sherlock’s face – at least, a much younger version of his face. Sherlock recognized his eight-year-old self.

They were in the same study, Sherlock could see the framed Austrian flag behind his younger self, its counterpart still hanging behind Blevins’ desk some thirty years later, although faded from time and sunlight.

“Will Holmes – can you confirm your date of birth is January 6, 1976?” asked the off-camera voice of Blevins. This Blevins hadn’t mastered his British pronunciation yet, his Germanic accent much more evident as he spoke.

“No,” replied the boy sternly, cold eyes peering to the right of frame to where Sherlock assumed the younger Blevins to be sitting.

“Why not, Will?” Blevins’ voice was tinged with worry, he could already sense something had gone awry with the treatment.

“Stop calling me that,” Sherlock’s younger self spat.

Sherlock could hear the flutter of paperwork from outside of the image. Blevins was looking for something in his notes to help him process what was happening – and to decide what to do next.

As he did so, another voice spoke up – it had been 20 years since Sherlock had heard that voice, but he would recognise it in an instant.

“Is your name William Sherlock Scott Holmes?” Uncle Rudy asked.

“It’s just Sherlock,” the young boy’s head turned to the left to where Rudy must have been standing, hidden on the other side of the camera’s lens.

“What happened to Will?” Blevins asked, his voice full of trepidation.

Sherlock watched as his younger self peered coldly down the camera lens. What he said next made the detective shudder.

“Will is gone.”

Blevins shut off the tape, ejecting it and placing it in Sherlock’s hands.

Blevins’ face was downcast, his voice grave. He walked over to the window, peering outside at the delicate white flowers growing in a planter box. His eyes stayed fixed on the flowers as he spoke.

“Rudy told me that Will wanted to be a pirate. That he and Victor would play at being Redbeard and Yellowbeard all day long.”

Sherlock nodded. “We did.”

Sherlock could see them both as clearly as if he was there with them, by the stream where they’d play.

After Sherrinford, all Sherlock’s memories of Redbeard the dog had been replaced in his memory with their original source. Victor the Pirate with his short-cropped red hair, eyepatch over one eye, kerchief around his neck and plastic cutthroat dagger in his hand.

Blevins began to reach out, but pulled away, sensing his comfort would not be accepted. “You became my little lost mariner. In all my research, I looked for a way to bring you home, Will.”

“And did you find it?” Sherlock didn’t care about finding himself – it was Molly he was more concerned about now.

“Almost – I mean, it’s not precise – but I believe there are keystone memories, truths buried so deeply and so intrinsically linked to one’s core being that no technology I can make could ever take it away from you.”

“Redbeard,” it was almost a whisper.

Blevins nodded. “Yes.”

It explained everything - why the man once described by John as a calculating machine had been so beset of late by his feelings for his pathologist. Sherlock didn’t just uncover Eurus and Victor after the trauma of Sherrinford – he had found a part of himself that he had lost for so long – Will.

Will, the emotional one. Will, the fiercely loyal one. Will, the one ruled by sentiment, by heart.

Of course Will had always been there, albeit just under the surface. When Sherlock was bored between cases, it was Will who struck out at the walls of Baker Street, punching them, and on one memorable occasion shooting them (before Mrs Hudson put a quick stop to that). Will was the one who decided to die in order to let Sherlock’s friends live. Will was the one who went to Molly and asked her to help him, who kissed her on the cheek after Sherlock’s cruel, thoughtless and blind deductions that Christmas. And it was Will who gave Sherlock the words to wish Molly’s happiness when it looked like she had moved on with another man – no matter how much contempt Sherlock himself held that man in.

If Will was always there, then there was a chance that the real Molly, his Molly, was still there too.

And if finding Redbeard was the key that unlocked Sherlock’s core memories, there was hope that he could help her do the same thing too.

The question was, what was Molly’s core memory?

* * *

Mycroft was smoking a cigarette as Sherlock found him stood in the alleyway outside Blevins’ house.

“Whatever it was you discovered today, brother-“ Mycroft began, only to be silenced by Sherlock’s right hook landing squarely on his brother’s jaw.

The cigarette fell from Mycroft’s fingers, abandoned on the ground next to his forgotten umbrella.

Sherlock’s knuckles seared in pain, but he ignored it, pushing Mycroft back against the brickwork, an arm braced across his brother’s windpipe.

“You knew.” Was all Sherlock could say.

Mycroft’s face reddened as he struggled for oxygen.

“You knew, and you let Molly have access to the same mind-fucking technology?” He wanted to erase his brother, to delete him from his life, but with much more violent means than the sterile science afforded by Project Elosia.

“No- ch-“ Mycroft struggled to speak.

Sherlock eased his pressure on his brother’s windpipe. He took a step back, more for Mycroft’s safety than anything else. A stay of execution – for now.

Mycroft gasped for air. A moment passed before he could rasp out the words, “No choice.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “There’s always a choice, brother.”

“Yes, and I chose the lesser of two evils. It was either give her the technology that would erase you, or allow her to be tortured should Moriarty’s network ever learn how – important – she was to you.”

There was a dual meaning in Mycroft’s use of the word important. How long had his brother known what Sherlock himself only just learned – just how much he needed Molly, how much she meant to him?

“That may be so, brother,” Sherlock spat the word with contempt, “but there is no excuse for leaving it with her after I’d returned.”

“The lives we lead, the choices you make, how could I be certain that Miss-“ Mycroft caught himself, “Doctor Hooper wouldn’t be needed by you again?”

Sherlock stalked off, unable to look at his brother’s face for fear of sending it crashing into the brickwork.

“Did you find what you were looking for, Sherlock?” Mycroft called out to his departing brother.

“It depends,” Sherlock said, not daring to look back.

“On what?” for once Mycroft Holmes didn’t know something.

“On what Molly’s Redbeard is,” Sherlock said as he hailed a cab. He had to see Molly – and quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've kept our dynamic duo apart for long enough now - I guarantee some Sherlolly interactions int he next chapter - whenever I'm able to post it!


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